Students with learning, mental and physical disabilities and online education

Background from survey

One quarter of the teachers thinks that the online education disadvantaged some students (from the connection, lack of concentration, disability point of view etc.), about one third thinks that no students were disadvantaged and almost half of educators don´t know. Besides technical problems (internet connection, technical equipment, missing trainings etc.) as the major cause of disadvantage of certain part of students mentioned by educators, following students were also found to be disadvantaged by some teachers:

• Students with concentration difficulties
• Students missing personal contact or suffering from the lack of interaction
• Those who suffer from psychological pressure
• Introverted students (since they did not show up)
• Students who don´t sufficiently understand the explanation, have poor expression skills, require private space at home
• Those with the time shift
• Decent and fair students (since cheating on online tests puts them in disadvantages)
• And people with disabilities (mentioned just by one educator)

To sum up, the students found to be disadvantaged in online education in our survey are those with psychological or attention problems and social or emotional needs and those with disabilities (without further specification). The most frequent causes of disadvantage are, however, the technical problems and the time shift (solved in other parts of this manual).

Students with disabilities and online education

For students with disabilities, online education may be even more challenging in many aspects including but not limited to attention problems, lack of social contacts, higher demands on self-discipline and self-motivation. On the other hand, with the assistive technology devices and services currently available, it also brings many advantages and some students (mainly those with physical disabilities) may even prefer remote forms of education to in-person learning.

• Assistive technology is any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities.

Students with learning disabilities, attention problems, mental illnesses and/or even social-emotional needs

Students with learning disabilities, attention problems, mental illnesses and/or even social-emotional needs might face several challenges in the era of transition to online education:

• Many students may experience increased feelings of anxiety, nervousness, isolation, fatigue, headaches, and a lack of motivation. Mainly in the era of long-term remote learning, the overall negative impact on all students’ mental health had consistently been proven. The students show highly increased level of stress due to the fears regarding their own health, loved one’s health, financial issues, and increased feelings of isolation. Such an impact may be even more serious in the students with learning disabilities, social-emotional problems or mental illnesses.
  • In contrast, for some anxious and shy students, going online may be easier and can help remove their discouragement. These students are frequently able to focus more on the lectures at home and may even prefer the online type of education over the in-person one.
• Students with learning disabilities typically have trouble understanding what they are studying; they usually need to read and analyse over and over again to get a good grasp of the lesson.
• Most of the students with learning disabilities and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may experience problems with their ability to focus on the education process. Some of these students have particular problem to focus in spaces that are not specified for schoolwork. They may find the home environment to have too many distractions and feel an incongruence between being at home and completing schoolwork. Furthermore, they may feel the days to become monotonous and lacking the variety, which may have a severe negative impact on their ability to stay focused.
• Besides the interference with student’s ability to learn basic reading, writing, or math, the learning disabilities and/or ADHD can also interfere with higher-level organizational and time management skills.
• Following approaches may help students with learning disabilities, attention problems and mental illnesses (and their teachers) cope with these problems and boost the engagement and connection:
  • Teachers are recommended to consult with their school psychologist, special education team, and counselling support staff in case of need any help with education and support of the students with various types of disabilities.
  • The students with special needs frequently require personalized attention and step-by-step individual support.
  • In fact, the individualized education programs often represent an optimal approach to these students, who often need:
    • More extensive explanation of the education goals, expectations and objectives.
    • Set up an optimal home-based learning environment.
    • More structured support:
      • Specialized and more detailed instructions (written directions or instructional videos).
      • Having tasks broken down for them into more manageable parts.
      • Frequent check-ins to ensure they are on the right track.
    • Use of the visual aids (coloured pictures, images, charts, and diagrams, that help people understand and remember information shared in an oral presentation).
    • Use of assistive technologies may also help to the students with learning disabilities (mainly dyslexia), attention disorders and autism:
      • Captioning and transcription services allow everything being said during a lesson to be seen in the bottom of the window, which helps to decrease or overcome the attention problems.
      • The same applies to the possibility to record the lectures and share the recording or the automated (machine generated) written transcript of the lecture.
    • If the students with special needs are included the common classes and mixed-up with students without disabilities, personal instructions and support can be provided to the disabled students using individual or small-group breakout rooms during the online education. This solution allows giving students with special needs extra instruction, encouragement, and support during tasks that they may not be able to do in the large group or independently.
  • The teachers should also focus on building positive relationship with the students with attention problems, learning disabilities, emotional-social needs, and/or mental illnesses. So called social-emotional learning represents a recommended approach. One of the key factors for academic success of the students with disabilities is having support systems, like caring adults who help them navigate the challenges they face. This approach helps students feel safe, seen and supported, decreases the amount of stress and disengagement and makes the student more connected.
  • General strategies which help overcome and/or solve the problems with keeping attention are mentioned above and apply to students with disabilities as well. Several strategies, however, seem to be particularly important for students with disabilities and help them stay focused. Such strategies should thus be actively supported by their teachers:
    • the opportunity to engage with a teacher and having a teacher answer a specific question
    • changing the speakers during the lecture
    • more frequent breaks
    • blocking specific time for studying
    • avoiding television, cell phones, social networks or streaming platforms during the time blocked for education.

Students with physical disabilities and online education

Physically-disabled students may also face some challenges in the online education era. The accessibility and performance of online teaching and learning in this group of students is highly dependent on the quality of technical equipment and the availability of assistive technological devices or services. Every computer provided to these students should be already equipped with disability accessibility software, and having multiples ways to enter answers. The same applied to the software tools. From this point of view, the situation had been markedly improved in last few years. Many students with physical disabilities thus may find the online learning to be more advantageous comparing to the in-person education for following reasons:

• Students who are physically challenged no longer have to travel long distances and don´t face any barriers to get in their classes. Their access to many educational activities is much easier. Online classes thus completely eliminate any physical barriers that previously existed and help decrease or even eliminate the physical exhaustion for mobile-impaired students. The same applies to their caretakers and families: the online educations reduces their burden.
  • The students with very serious mobility disabilities affecting hand control and coordination require specific assistive technologies like mouth sticks, eye tracking, or pointing devices to navigate websites. Similar technologies, however, would probably be necessary for using any online study materials even in the in-person education era.
• In visually-impaired or hearing-impaired students, appropriate support to cope with the challenges associated with distance learning should be provided. Currently, there are many innovative tools and assistive technology devices or services available and their use may again represent an advantage for students with both visual and hearing impairment when compared with in-person forms of education. Every computer provided to these students should thus be already equipped with disability accessibility software, so the software tools including the e-learning platforms do:
  • Many communication platforms (e.g. Zoom, Brightspace, and TopHat) include accessibility features for the disabled user such as accessibility checkers, external text-to-speech software compatibility, screen reader support, and closed captioning.
    • Accessibility Checker is a free tool available in many programmes and applications (e.g. Word, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, and PowerPoint on Windows, Adobe Reader, Office for the web, or Mac, and Visio on Windows). It serves to find most accessibility issues and explain why each might be a potential problem for someone with a disability. It also offers suggestions on how to resolve each issue.
    • A screen reader is a software application that enables people with severe visual impairments to use a computer. It uses a Text-To-Speech engine to translate on-screen information into speech, which can be heard through earphones or speakers. This tool provides the visually-impaired students the possibility to explore any written resources online. When teaching a visually-impaired student, teachers should always check the support of text-to-speech functionality in course materials or web content recommended.
      • Furthermore, screen readers are also capable of providing information in Braille if needed. An external hardware device, known as a refreshable Braille display is needed for this.
    • Closed captions are a text version of the spoken part of a television, movie, or computer presentation. Closed captioning was developed to aid hearing-impaired or deaf people. Here, again, the teachers should always check the support of closed captioning functionality in course materials or web content recommended, when teaching students with hearing impairment.
  • Braille keyboards are also available for visually-impaired or even blinded students.
• All the above mentioned options allow the physically disabled students to study in a much freer environment, removing the discouragement of learning and enticing them to participate more actively instead.
• They usually also prefer the option to study at their own pace, which represents another advantage of the online form of studying.
• The online form of studies also helps these students reduce their costs, which many of the physically disabled students may find highly important.
• For some of the students with physical disabilities, the availability of the online education programs may thus even represent the most important factor when choosing the university.