1. Career opportunities in Information Technology
2. Information technology Education in K-12 schools
3. Ensuring Information Technology Accessibility in Educating the K-12 Student through process self assessment and review.

1. Career opportunities in Information Technology

The objective of this initiative is to promote and inform the blind or visually impaired middle school/high school student of the opportunities in an Information Technology career.

1.1 Information Technology Careers Website

The ITCareers website was completed and have the following contents:

• The "careers" pages points to pages that describe, in detail, the career path and the necessary qualifications. Also a statement of the accessibility requirements of the job.
• The "Learning Programming" pages have a step by step guide to learning each of the most used by industry programming language and software. This includes: setting up your system; and, the online tutorials.

 

Go to ITCareers website

1.2 Information Technology Careers Workshop Presentation

The following presentation "Information Technology Career Opportunities for the Blind/VI" was created and presented in a workshop to a middle school group and is probably more applicable to high school students. The presentation describes what IT is and how it is generally used in business. It then describes how Information Technology is created, distributed, stored and analyzed via software and hardware. Then a very basic instruction is given describing what is programming. Also described are a list of IT job titles and one line function descriptions.

 

• Presentation (Powerpoint) (PDF)
• Presentation Script

Return to top

2. Information technology Education in K-12 Schools

The objective of this initiative is to express the importance, to K-12 educators, of the use of information technology in the education of the blind and visually impaired student. The issues are:

• Ensure blind/VI student competence in information technology training and utilization .
• Implement processes that ensure that information technology software, hardware and physical facilities are accessible.
• Take advantage of the capabilities of Distance Learning to effectively enhance the education of the K-12 student.

 

2.1 "Information Technology in K-12 Schools" School District Presentation

The presentation was given to the Hillsborough County School District superintendent and her staff. The following proposals were received very positively.

1) Have an accessibility policy/guideline document and checklist against Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 508 Access Standards.
2) Include accessible web design and website maintenance in the Introduction to Web Development curriculum.

3) Create an Introduction to Information Technology program for the blind/vi students
4) As part of the policy, address the assurance that blind/vi students have equivalent availability of hardware and software.
5) Investigate the use of “conferencing”/Distance Learning for group instruction of blind/vi students via the Internet/internal network.

• Presentation (Powerpoint) (PDF)
• Presentation Script

2.2 Information Technology Initiative Website

The Information Technology Initiative is an effort by the East Hillsborough Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Florida to encourage and promote an emphasis on training the blind and visually impaired students in Information Technology. The goal of the initiative are for each student to Increase the college or technical school entrance and employment of the blind and visually impaired. This website documents the efforts of the initiative to be used as a template for other chapters and school systems. All the resources that were reference and used are either documented in this site or have links to them. The "workshop Modules" are classroom scripts used at each of the sessions.

Go to ITInit website

2.3 Ingraining Information Technology Accessibility into the K-12 Education Paper

A paper titled "Ingraining Information Technology Accessibility into the K-12 Education" was sent to the Governor's Commission on Disabilities - April 18, 2008 as input to the K-12 Education focus.

(View as HTML) (Download Doc)

2.4 Accessible Distance Learning in K-12 Schools

"A proposal for a study to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of distance learning for K-12 Exceptional Students ”. This paper was sent to the Hillsborough County School District Assistant Superintendent who is responsible for implementing the county wide Hillsborough Virtual School District". There has been no response.

(View as HTML) (Download Doc)

Return to top

3. Ensuring Information Technology Accessibility in Educating the K-12 Student

3.1 K-12 Accessibility Self Assessment and Review

As educational entities implement information technology (IT) practices and procedures, it is critical that they consider the accessibility practices versus their goals. At present, only a small number of educational entities have begun to systematically address accessibility within their IT procurement processes. Use of a “Self Assessment Accessibility Checklist” is a promising practice for state governments and nongovernmental organizations, including educational entities, who seek to manage compliance in an accessible IT. The self assessment is performed on a regular schedule (i.e., yearly). The results are rolled up to a district level.

The self assessment and review and checklist concept was part of the Hillsborough School District presentation.

3.1.1 Example IT in Education Self Assessment Checklist

• Presentation (Powerpoint) (PDF)
• Presentation Script

Return to top