Back to Basics: Special Education

Given some topics that I want to address, I thought it'd be useful to provide a high-level summary of some of the basics of special education.  It has a lingo of its own, and it's useful to know common concepts and acronyms to navigate in this world.

First of all, special education is governed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which was first passed in 1975.  It came about in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court, which held, in 1954, that all children were entitled to education - that separate was inherently not equal.  IDEA is thus a civil rights statute, but is also a funding statute that provides funds to states in exchange for the states' commitment to certain minimum standards for special education programs.  (Note that IDEA is not, and has never been, fully funded.  It is currently funded at about 12% of its allocation).

Ok, so, who knows what special education *is not*?

21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act

Congress passed a surprisingly under-reported piece of legislation last October that's designed to make advanced communications, video (both traditional cable and broadcast TV, as well as Internet), and mobile phones more accessible to people with disabilities.  The chairman of the FCC called it "the most significant piece of disability legislation in 20 years".  He's probably right, which is why it's strange that no one knows about it. You can find the law here: 21st Century Communications Act.  Here's a short summary:

1. Browsers on smart phones must be accessible, and smart phones must be compatible with hearing aids;
2. FCC has the authority to ensure that people with disabilities can access next generation of 911 technology;
3. The top 4 broadcast and top 5 cable networks required to provide 50 hours of programming per week with video description;
4. Programs shown on TV with closed captioning must include such captions when reshown on internet; and
5. Emergency information typically shown as silent text crawl at bottom of screen must be made accessible to the blind.

e-Textbook Market Scaling Up

Do you remember lugging around a 15 pound backpack in middle school - with just half of your day's textbooks?  Those textbooks were heavy.  About the only thing I'd miss going through that with my kids is the ritual wrapping of the textbooks in old paper grocery bags.  (Do kids still do this?  It must be hard, given the scarcity of brown paper grocery bags).

Anyway, that's not likely to be an issue for much longer because e-textbooks are on the move.  There have been a number of recent newsarticles describing the trends in the educational book industry, and the signs are all pointing one way: the decline of traditional textbooks.

A word about words

Perhaps I'm about to expose my liberal arts background.  Or perhaps I'll be saying the obvious, but this post is about the importance of labels, and how the words we use to describe people with disabilities matter.

I think we'd all agree that language evolves, and evolves in such a way that words we've used in the past just aren't acceptable in the present day.  I know that some people get annoyed about what they view as "PC" attitudes (and indeed, did you see P.C.U.?  It was released when I was in high school, and I remember thinking it was funny.  Features Jeremy Piven, of more current Entourage fame, as well as George Clinton and Parliament.  Rockin.). And some believe that labels polarize people, accentuate differences and not similarities, and contribute to a feeling of divisiveness in our society.

Well, hopefully the 90s era of policitizing labels has passed, as we all have become more aware of the importance of respecting others as individuals, with their right to self-identify as they choose.  But, as in other areas, attitudes towards those with disabilities have lagged.  Three examples for you.

Medicaid and the iPad

File this one under example #873242 of how the federal government gets things wrong.

As you may or may not know, kids with special needs often can qualify under Medicaid (where their parents do not), or a Medicaid waiver, to cover certain medical and therapeutic expenses that would otherwise be prohibitive.  One example that I'm personally familiar with is an AAC device (which stands for Alternative Augmentative Communication).  An AAC device is any kind of assistive technology that helps a child (or, perhaps an adult who has suffered a stroke) communicate to others.  Examples include low-tech PECS boards and run all the way to dedicated picture-based "talkers" like the Dynavox or Vantage Lite.  (If you're really interested you can learn more at Dynavox and Vantage Lite).  Note that these dedicated devices - which look like archaic throwbacks to computers in the 1970s, btw - cannot do any other type of function.  And for the privilege of getting one, you can expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $7-9,000. 

The Eggshell Child, or, "Are you Disabled Enough?"

As I explained earlier in Cloud Computing and Disabilities, disabilities are part of the spectrum of being human.  As the medical understanding of disability as changed, federal regulations have evolved to reflect this understanding as well. In fact, the IDEA 2004 recognizes that "Disability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society.  Improving educational results for children with disabilities is an essential element of our national policy ofensuring equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities." 

The problem - and it's built into the same IDEA regulations -  is that special ed services are available only to those kids who fit into one of about a dozen boxes (e.g., specific learning disability, visual impairment, other health impairment, etc.)  On top of that, many school districts require there to be a significant discrepancy between the child's intelligence and academic performance to even offer the child services.  In some cases, this might mean that your child needs to be 2 standard deviations away from the norm on an assessment test. It's not enough to say that your child is struggling with reading; your child needs to be struggling with reading AND is performing at, say, the 16th percentile.

Web Accessibility and the ADA (Intro and Links)

Rather unbelievably to me, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) celebrated its 20th anniversary last year.  That's right - until 1990 there *was* no ADA.  I suppose we should be pleased that I grew up in a country where I assumed that the ADA had always been in place.

But let's think about it for a minute: in 1990, there was no real Internet.  (Remember AOL?  and Prodigy?  ha!)  There was no Google.  No online banking, or airline ticket booking, or library services, or entertainment of any kind.  And so the ADA contains no provisions that address such scenarios.  As you might expect, there have been a number of lawsuits filed in the years since attempting to seek clarification as to whether the ADA does apply to websites offering services through their sites.  Courts have gone both ways, although the DOJ - charged with enforcing the ADA - routinely offered its non-binding opinion that the ADA did apply, at least in some situations.  (For you lawyers and other masochists out there, check out the suits and DOJ briefs here: NFB v. Target, Access Now v. Southwest Airlines, DOJ letter to Sen. Harkin, and the DOJ brief in Hooks v. OKBridge, which I was unable to find at press time.)

Cloud Computing and Disabilities, Part Two

As promised (threatened?!), here are the next few thoughts on the Coleman Institute/Silicon Flatirons conference I attended last fall.  Today I'll cover some of the perspectives offered by Michael Wehmeyer, a professor of special education at Kansas University, about cognitive accessibility.

Prof. Wehmeyer provided a brief history of the concept of "disability".  Originally, disability was understood as a medical/health problem - a problem within the individual person.  That person is viewed as "broken" or aberrant, as outside the norm and therefore requiring intervention.  This model casts a negative light on people with disabilities and in fact contributed to the infantilization of people with cognitive disabilities ("You are not "smart" like me; there is something wrong with you; I am going to tell you how you're going to live your life").