Accessibility and Human Computing Interaction: Engaging and Motivating Students With Disabilities Through More Computer Empowerment

While many instructors need to focus on the syllabus, subject content, administrative tasks, and students with varying learning styles, they may also need to address various learning style of students with disabilities. Many universities offer teacher training, but their training may not be detailed enough to help instructors be prepared to work with classroom accommodations for students with disabilities. In particular, online (virtual) instructors have another factor to work with in this situation, they have to work with students with disabilities virtually and offer similar or comparable accommodations. Many educational institutions are seeing that more students are enrolling in online programs and courses, and they realize that there may be some additional barriers to learning in terms of this learning environment's technical process and structure. In particular, students with disabilities are enrolling even more with online courses with the hopes of a barrier-free environment. Thus, there are still some barriers still present in the learning environment in terms of technical/software application or interaction/communication problems. The purpose of this paper will be to look at how a university can address such problems and develop/create virtual solutions to these barriers by incorporating the help of others in the online community to brainstorm methods of inquiry and build virtual strategies. In particular, there needs to be a special emphasis given to online instructors to become better prepared and trained with technology in terms of structure and how to motivate all types of students, especially students with disabilities, to become more interactive online. Thus, there is a growing need for more human computer interaction, rather than just selecting and clicking single choices. Consequently, universities need to design and develop training programs to help educate and train current and potential instructors in the areas of disability awareness, virtual classroom accommodations for students with disabilities, as well as to create strategies for better learning opportunities for these students. The key focus with this training program would be to create better strategies to help increase better human computing opportunities for all types of students. While many instructors may not be facilitating learning for this particular population at this time, the virtual learning environment is starting to attract more students with disabilities with a growing need to help them become more successful in their educational endeavors. Finally, this presentation will help to offer more insight as to the role and function of instructors in meeting the needs of students with disabilities.