[nfbcs] FW: your advice would be appreciatedFW: [List] Handling

[Nancy Coffman]

hello everyone,  I hope your professor can get over the surprise of finding a blind person in the class. One thing I would talk with school officials and your professor about is the possibility of changing the emphasis from the visual elements (some) to designing for accessibility. Let them know that you are concerned about the attractiveness but would prefer to make your emphasis be on creating pages that are useful to people who have a variety of technology concerns such as blind ness, need for an   

 alternative color set, a hearing impairment that requires captions or a seisure disorder that limits screen flicker.  Getting the school to think about aspects of the class that are outside the box may work in your favor and get the school to think about whether they have other programs and practices that should be more accessible to people with disabilities than they are.  Keep us posted on how things go.  Nancy Coffman 
Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 26, 2013, at 11:04 AM, Jim Barbour <jbar at barcore.com> wrote:

> Hi Gary,
> 
> A lot of this has already been said, so I'll try and be brief.
> 
> The student should absolutely take the class; in my mind it isn't even
> really much of a debate.  There may have to be some negotiation with
> the university, which I'd be happy to help with if necessary.
> 
> The purpose of a design class is to learn what's important when
> designing applications; web applications in this case.
> 
> Even if the student needed to engage a reader to do every bit of the
> work in the course, the student could still be expected to learn the
> principals, decision points, architecture, etc. of a well   The
> student probably will not come out of the course being literate in the
> particular tool being used, but isn't (well, shouldn't be) the point
> of the course.
> 
> Since this course is a required course, the university must consider
> web design to be a pretty fundamental skill, which means it isn't
> about learning how to run the particular piece of software.
> 
> Therefore, the ODR and the computer science department should
> absolutely be able to work out a way to teach this course to a blind
> student.
> 
> Statements to the effect that this will be hard, or a waste of time,
> are absolutely not appropriate.
> 
> I hope this is helpful, along with being a bit preachy <grin>
> 
> Jim
> 
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 07:43:06AM -0500, Gary Wunder wrote:
>> Folks, can you help me in helping a student who wants to know if it is
>> realistic for him to take a class in computer design?
>> 
>> Thank you.
>> 
>> Gary