Dr. Sheryl Burgstahler has made it her mission to help students with disabilities achieve their college and career goals. As director of Accessible Technology Services for UW Computing & Communications, she looks for ways that technology can make learning and employment more accessible to those with disabilities. Through the DO-IT Scholars program that Burgstahler founded and directs, hundreds of students with disabilities have achieved successful careers—commonly in fields such as science, engineering and technology.

Watch both “Self-Examination: Is Your Campus Accessible?” and “Invisible Disabilities & Postsecondary Education,” April 27 at 7:30 p.m. PT.

Burgstahler was recognized recently with the prestigious 2006 Harry J. Murphy Catalyst Award, which honors those who bring people together and facilitate the efforts of others in the field of technology and disability. Her program has gained an international reputation, aspects of which are modeled by institutions across the country and around the world.

Be sure to catch the new DO-IT programs that air this month: “Self-Examination: Is Your Campus Accessible?” and “Invisible Disabilities & Postsecondary Education.”

Who or what inspired you to help students with disabilities achieve success through technology?

My work today reflects my professional background as well as some personal experiences that I have had. My background is in math and computer science. I am very interested in education and taught middle-school mathematics years ago. I also taught college-level math and computer science at Saint Martin’s University near Olympia. While there I co-wrote a grant proposal that was accepted, with the funding used to create a microcomputer and educational software resource center for teachers. The facility was expanded to include technology for students with disabilities, mainly focusing on children in the K-12 environment. It was a very exciting time in the 1970s, with microcomputers becoming available and people exploring ways to use them. Simultaneously, there was a grassroots effort to make computers accessible, primarily to people with physical disabilities. Engineers were working in their garages, usually because they had a family member with a disability, to come up with gadgets that could be attached to these computers to make them more accessible. I got caught up in that movement.

I met one child in particular, a 6-year-old boy who was quadriplegic. I got connected with him and his family, and helped him obtain a computer so that he could enter first grade and be able to write independently. Since he couldn’t use his hands, he needed a special adaptive device to access the computer keyboard. I contacted Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was experimenting with adaptive technology. He sent me a drawing of a switch box that could be interfaced with an Apple II computer. A person like this child could lock the shift, control and repeat keys with three switches and then poke keys using a stick in his mouth, typing keys sequentially when they were normally pressed simultaneously (e.g., shift-letter for capital letters). I hired an engineering student to build it for me. Back then, there seemed to be only a handful of people developing adaptive technology. Soon came the devices for people who were blind, such as speech output and Braille devices, and ultimately the literally thousands of adaptive technology products that are available today.

I tend to be intrigued by gadgets, which is what brought me to computing in the first place. My dad was a used car dealer, and I spent a lot of time on a car lot while I was growing up. I was always fascinated with motors and gadgets in the shop. In addition to my interest in technology and education, I am interested in who benefits from new technologies. You can’t find any application with a greater impact than the impact of technology on the lives of people with disabilities. Access to technology can literally turn lives around for the better. Imagine, a generation ago, a person who was quadriplegic had very few—if any—employment opportunities. Today, people who are quadriplegic can be very successful systems engineers, software engineers and scientists once computer access issues are solved.

 
As founder and director of UW’s DO-IT program, what are your major goals?

We have one major goal with DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology), and that is to increase the academic and career success of people with disabilities. In particular, we primarily focus efforts on people with disabilities who are college-capable. In everything we do, we explore how technology can be used as an empowering tool to reach our goal. The technology is secondary to the goal of increasing the overall success of these students.

How are students encouraged to pursue careers in science, engineering, math and technology?

We target students when they are just beginning to think seriously about college and career choices, in their sophomore year in high school. But, if we had unlimited resources, we would try to reach them in preschool. We have multiple programs, but the one that is the longest running is called DO-IT Scholars, for which we recruit 20 sophomores each year. The students are college-capable, with disabilities that impose challenges in reaching the goal of a college education and career. They each come to the UW campus for two or three summers before college, and we provide them with a computer system and any assistive technology they need. Blind students, for example, would typically receive a laptop computer, text-to-speech software, a scanner with optical character recognition, Braille translation software and a Braille embosser/printer. With this technology, students can actually create their own Braille from electronic text. The goal is to help them be as independent as possible in producing college-level work while working toward a career. High-school students with severe disabilities may have a personal assistant, which is not typically provided in college or in a career. So we ask, How can we use technology to minimize the amount of help they need?

Students in the program live in dorms on campus for two weeks each summer. They learn about college life, how to negotiate cafeteria lines and other campus facilities and how to use technology. About half of the students have disabilities that are not immediately apparent, such as learning disabilities, Asperger’s Syndrome and hearing or visual impairments that are not obvious. We try to include students with a wide range of different disabilities in the program. It is my firm belief that we cannot create tomorrow’s leaders with people who only know about their own disabilities. I am interested in educating people with disabilities to not only become competent and successful themselves, but also to be able to speak about other types of disabilities and take on leadership positions. The solution to an access issue for one individual could actually create access issues for someone with a different disability, so it is important to have a broad perspective when it comes to accessibility issues. To make changes in this world, we need people who are not just advocates for themselves but for each other.

Summer programs are an important part of how we help students prepare for college, but we also have a very active electronic mentoring community, too. We set up computers in students’ homes and give them access to the Internet and to a discussion list. The list includes DO-IT participants from as far back as 1993 as well as outside mentors who share their experiences with disabilities, technology, college and careers. The program provides group mentoring rather than one-on-one, although natural connections do occur based on student interests. Another important part of the program is work-based learning, including internships. We are tireless in getting the DO-IT scholars and other young people with disabilities into paid internships, usually in the summer. Students with disabilities tend not to do as well in college, and those who do succeed in college tend to graduate with little or no work experience. That creates an additional road block to getting a job, besides any discrimination or access issues they might face as a result of their disabilities. So our program assists these students in applying for internship positions. We help them with their resume, we help them with their interview skills, we advise them on what to wear, anything that helps get their foot—or wheel—in the door. Some students aren’t really ready for a job, so we can instead seek job shadow or volunteer opportunities for them. We try to provide students with work experiences that are most appropriate for them and that benefit the employers.

Could you share a few examples of how technology is assisting students in the classroom and on campus?

One area that people don’t always think about is how technology can help students with learning disabilities, particularly dyslexia and other disabilities that affect reading. In our program, these students receive a laptop computer with text-to-speech software. Basically, we help them use the computer to read to them. These students typically did not have access to this technology in high school, sometimes because of the belief that with such access they would not try as hard to develop their reading skills. Our feeling is that we should continue to help these students develop reading skills. But if they are reading at a first- or second-grade level at 16 years old, we need to accept the fact that they may never become good readers. This technology can replace the need for another person to read to these students, making them more independent both in college and careers.

We also use technology for students who have difficulty writing. Some students with disabilities have trouble translating thoughts from their brains to their hands. These students can benefit from using dictation software, where they train the computer to understand their voice and then speak to the computer. They might even have a speech output device, so that the computer can read the dictation back to them.

For people with mobility impairments, some of the most interesting technology is for people who can’t use their hands or have no hands. There are all sorts of ways you can operate a computer. Speech input is a common way, although it can be quite exhausting (and noisy) to talk to a computer all day. Sometimes Morse code is used, where a person uses two reliable motions such as moving their head back and forth or sipping and puffing in a straw. One movement is registered as a dot and the other as a dash, sending Morse code to the computer where it is translated into standard text and other characters. While it may sound cumbersome, it is actually quite easy to learn, relatively quiet and faster than speech input.

For students who are deaf, the best thing about technology is simply that it exists. They can use text messaging and e-mail to communicate with their friends and teachers. It is a much more direct way of communicating than what they may have experienced when using a sign language interpreter.

You have secured an extraordinary amount of funding—more than $30 million—from national, state and private donors. What is the biggest obstacle you have overcome in this work?

In my current work, the biggest challenge has been finding funding to align with the work that needs to be done. You have certain funding agencies and opportunities, but you have to consider what people with disabilities need for success as well as what interests C&C and the University. I try to put all those things together and get funding to do something useful; this is a really hard thing to do. Because I have secured a lot of funding, I think that people sometimes believe it is fairly easy to find it and get it. But it is quite difficult, a day-to-day challenge. In addition, getting the dollars for projects and managing the cash flow is difficult. Grants begin and end at different times, so there are times when I would like to save some money until next year but am required to spend it before the end of the year. It comes down to locating and securing the money to do the projects that I think are worthwhile and are also consistent with the goals of our department and the University. Often getting funding and managing the flow of money is harder than doing the projects themselves.

In addition to financial support, what will it take to make technology accessible to all?

The greatest challenge is to make technology available to and usable by all students in our schools. The biggest barrier I see is not the funding; it is the knowledge of various stakeholders such as parents, teachers and computer lab managers in K-12 schools. These groups sometimes do not know about assistive technology. Even if they know a little bit, they tend not to know how to maximize its use to increase the independence, productivity and participation of students with disabilities. You might have one adaptive keyboard and software package in a special education room that is only available to a particular student for one-half hour on Fridays. I believe that assistive technology needs to be with these students at all times, like their right-hand man. It is more like a prosthetic than some tool that they would go and use once in a while. The technology should be bolted to their wheelchair or in their backpack, so they can just pull it out and use it whenever they need it. That doesn’t happen a lot in K-12 schools. If they even have the technology, it is often isolated somewhere. Teachers express concerns about securing the technology, or having it available for use by multiple students. There are management issues to overcome, and too often the technology does not get into the hands of the students 24/7. The DO-IT scholars here can take the equipment wherever they need it—home, classroom, the lab.

You have written several books about using the Internet to provide learning opportunities for children. How has the Internet created new opportunities—and challenges—for learning?

The Internet is certainly creating opportunities. I have a 16-year-old son, so I watch him using technology. As a sophomore in high school, he can do amazing things for projects and reports. I think the best benefit of the Internet is as a tremendous information resource for finding out about particular topics. One of the challenges is to decrease the gap between the haves and have-nots: I worry about kids who do not have access to a home computer. It creates an even greater separation between students who are coming from more affluent, educated households and those who are not. This digital divide really troubles me. I think the kids that were left behind in earlier days will be more left behind because of technology. The other thing that I am concerned about is that students—my son included—have forgotten about print materials that are not on the Internet. I even see this in the academic world: many of the articles use only web references. I try to go the extra mile to also reference printed publications in my papers, as a lot of professional journals are only in print form. I think we are becoming this world where, if it is not on the Internet, it does not count. Like everything else, technology provides both opportunities and challenges.

What are your current research interests?

I am particularly interested in applications of universal design. Universal design started in the field of architecture and, in part, led to the accessibility requirements for buildings under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The whole idea of accessible design is, rather than design something for the average user, to design it for the broad range of users. Today we can apply universal design to technology. How do you design technology so that it can be used effectively by not just people with disabilities, but also other groups such as children and senior citizens? Some technology is universally designed, but much is not. Universal design is also being applied to education in general. Universal design of instruction is a particular interest of mine. How do you help faculty members think proactively about the range of diverse characteristics of students who might be in their classes, including gender and minority status as well as disability? How can they design courses that are more accessible to more students in the first place? That approach minimizes the number of accommodations needed, particularly for those students with disabilities, just like universal design of technology minimizes the need for assistive technology and other accommodations.

The other application of universal design that I am interested in is the universal design of student services. How do we improve registration services, libraries and career centers to make them more welcoming and accessible to diverse groups? Universal design is an end product, but it is also an attitude and process. We need to get people to change the way they look at things. People may consider how to accommodate more obvious disabilities, but the rest of the range of human characteristics is often an afterthought instead of being recognized as natural conditions. The human being comes in many sizes, with many different abilities and disabilities. How can we design a student union building or a career services office so that all visitors feel that this place was designed for them?

If you could convey one message to children with disabilities, what would it be?

Parents and teachers of children with disabilities should encourage them to set their expectations high, rather than limit their expectations. The focus should be on exploring ways to reach their goals. What I find is that expectations are often too low for students with disabilities, and perhaps are the result of not considering how technology and other accommodations can help them reach their goals. When students have an interest in something, they should explore all options within that field. For instance, we have a student who is really interested in sports and happens to be severely physically disabled. He has put his energy into developing his writing skills, and now he is writing about sports. He got an internship working on a database with an athletic department. He is even active with his school’s radio station. Similarly, some students may not be able to manipulate objects, but they can develop the skills in engineering or computer science and become a technical writer. Microsoft and other high-tech companies are always looking for people who can write manuals and translate very technical information for laypeople. I think this goes for students without disabilities too: they need to look at what their interests are and then research the wide range of opportunities in related fields rather than narrowing their focus too quickly. So, I would say to a student with a disability, keep your expectations high—and get and use technology as a tool!