STC Usability SIG Newsletter
Usability Interface

Technology in the Classroom

By David Dick with Fabien Vais

At this year’s STC conference I had an opportunity to speak with Fabien Vais to discuss how technology is used in the classroom. Fabien teaches Technical Writing at Concordia University (Montreal) and has taught students with special needs (vision and mobility). The following is what he had to say:

A few years ago, I had a student who came to class with a seeing-eye dog. He was a technical editor and he was blind. I had never met a blind technical editor, much less taught one before, so the first thing I asked him was if he needed any assistance. His only request was that I recite whatever I wrote on the board and that I ask students to speak loudly and clearly. He always attended class with his laptop PC that was specially designed for his use and needs. Whenever I gave handouts to the class, he took them home and scanned them into his laptop. Text recognition software translated the text into audible words which he could hear with his headphones. He dictated notes and corrections to the computer. When I gave a test in class, I handed a sheet to everyone and a diskette to him. He handed back the same diskette with his answers. The only drawback was that diagrams and illustrations could not be translated, but that was not a problem because my handouts did not include illustrations. I was amazed that he could follow the class and impressed because he excelled. He remains one of the best technical editors that I have ever met. On another occasion, I had a student who attended class in a wheelchair and, because of mobility problems, the wheelchair was adapted to him to compensate, for his limited hand movements. He could not write with his hands but he was capable of using the keyboard of a laptop PC. He too could follow quite well. Often, helping people such as these means just understanding their limitations and making minor changes in our behavior.

Clearly, improving usability is not just a matter of simplifying design; it can also be about designing to improve the quality of life of its users.