Disabled Need Tools for Schools

The Boston-based TV and radio group WGBH, with the support of the National
Science Foundation, has released a new report, "Making Educational Software
Accessible," that calls upon software developers to create learning programs
that students with impaired hearing, sight, or manual dexterity can use. The
report is the result of a three-year study of educational software intended
for math and science students, and the report's authors hope their findings
will allow disabled students to increase their participation in these fields.
The report suggests several steps to improve educational software for science
and math, including closed-captioning, screen-reading software,
text-descriptions to match images, keyboard navigation, and screen-reading
software. The report's authors say it should be neither difficult nor costly
for software developers to implement such changes. Several software
developers responded that while they are unaware of the guidelines, they saw
no reason not to make their products more accessible. There is no federal
legislation mandating that software be accessible to the disabled. (Wired
News, 14 December 2000)