Here is a response from a New Zealand voice technology user:

Celia
>Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 16:59:58 +1200 (NZST)
>X-Sender: [log in to unmask]
>To: "Celia L. Cockburn" <[log in to unmask]>
>From: [log in to unmask] (Graeme Roffey)
>Subject: Re: Speech input systems and blind students - again!
>
>>Forwarded from [log in to unmask]
>>-an academic mailbase for those supporting students with disabilities:
>>
>>>Does anyone have experience of using Dragon Dictate, Simply Speaking or 
>>>Voice Pad Pro (or their variants) with JAWS, .....
>
>Celia
>
>I recently demonstrated NatSpeak to a blind person and we also loaded JAWS 2
>onto the same PC.  While each could work separately, we were not able to get
>both working together as each wanted control of the sound card.
>
>Despite this I believe that with perserverance, and installing a second
>sound card, it would be possible to get both working together.
>
>As for your question of getting the system to produce a letter with the
>screen turned off, I believe that I could have done that with DragonDictate
>for DOS.
>If I spent the time I could therefore do it with DD Win.  From what I have
>heard about NatSpeak Pro, I think that this will also provide sufficient for
>me to do it with that product.  If all went well I could do it with NatSpeak
>Personal, but I could not correct any errors, and if the system recognised
>the commands incorrectly I would get totally lost.
>
>My background, so you can put these comments in perspective, is:
>* 32 years in the computer industry doing every job except repairing them.
>* 6 years running a training program for programmers and analysts.
>* 6 years working as a systems consultant.
>* 10 years working part time assessing the needs of people with
>disabilities,   producing recommendations for systems for them, and often
>setting up these   systems and training the clients to use them.
>* Selling and supporting Dragon products for the last 5 years.
>
>I hope my comments are of use although I had hoped that you would have got
>replies from blind users which would be much more accurate.
>
>Regards
>Graeme Roffey
>Equation Systems Limited
>Dragon Systems Speech Recognition Supplier
>=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 01 Oct 1997 15:27:15 +1100
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From:         Liz Bredberg <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: adult dyslexia (fwd)
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Dear Sharon,

I was very interested in your initial posting about your problem (student),
but by the time I got around to replying, it seemed as though you had
received a fair few suggestions, and I noted that you had wanted
suggestions to take to a meeting that had already taken place.   So I left
it.  I'm now rather sorry I did.

I think it's important to respond to your latest posting.   I find it
frankly worrying, and think it raises several critical issues in the
practice of supporting reading disabled  (or dyslexic) students in
post-secondary education that really require consideration and discussion.  

I have some experience with dyslexic university students:  among other
things, I spent a year tutoring them in an assortment of arts subjects (art
history, theology, history, etc.) at a  well-regarded Canadian university a
few years ago, and have an incredibly able and hard-working but quite
dyslexic friend and colleague who's just finishing a PhD in child
psychology.  My own doctorate is in special education;  dyslexia wasn't my
area of specialisation, but I had a fair amount of exposure to the research
in the area in the course of a research assistantship that I held.   

You can take the above as either qualifying or disqualifying as you wish,
possibly depending on your response to my criticisms.

1.    First, and perhaps central to the entire issue of students with
various exceptionalities in higher education (and elsewhere) seems to be
the issue of time.  Completion of work within a given time frame seems to
me to be quite distinct from the actual quality of learning that takes
place within a course.  I realise that this poses practical difficulties in
terms of marking, etc., but some students do in fact take longer for an
assortment of reasons (visual difficulties, motor problems, health, as well
as dyslexia) to apprehend course material.  Once they've done so, however,
their learning is no less complete or deep than that of students who have
taken the more ordinary length of time to complete a course of study.  This
certainly was my observation while tutoring, where a couple of students did
have extensions on the length of time it took them to finish courses.   The
issue of time seems to me to be more administrative than pedagogic.  If the
role of a university is to *produce* graduates efficiently within the
traditional three or four years, then students who learn at a slower rate
will be penalised.  If, however, the university is primarily a place of
learning, they should be accommodated.  This really isn't an issue of
lowering academic standards for disabled students,  although it is often
treated as such.   It is an issue of the "level playing field."  Speed of
learning should not be an issue.

2.  I can't tell from your postings whether the student has ever tried
books on tape.  Among the dylexic students with whom I've been acquainted,
I would say that slightly over half  found recorded texts helpful, and the
rest found them useless.  This seems to me consistent with the possiblity
that there may be a number of different types of dyslexia (the literature
seems to support this) , and that the means of assisting them may vary
quite legitimately.  An  excessive reliance on taped texts as a "helping
strategy" by "learning support specialists" seems in fact to have posed
obstacles to the second group.  Optimally, they found that getting reading
lists well in advance of their courses was the most helpful thing that
could be done for them.  I might add that this was better accomplished
through the support specialists than through the students themselves.
This brings me to a third point:

3.  A remarkable number of instructors (the university at which I tutored
was by no means unique in this respect from what I have heard elsewhere)
were very reluctant to make accommodations such as the above available,
even though they had used the same reading list over a number of years.
It seems to me to be a sad truth that although university and college
instructors are (mosty) quite competent in their disciplines, they often
are far less competent when it comes to understanding the teaching-learning
interaction.  As such, any student with any exceptional need poses them a
challenge that they are all too often quite reluctant to meet.   This of
course poses a challenge in turn to learning support specialists who need
to justify requests for assistance to people who have never had to think
much about teaching, and who have rarely been called upon to change their
instructional techniques.  In addition, as a whole, they're quite used to
being authorities, and can find it difficult to accept questions or
suggested changes....

4.  I found myself in disagreement with the coordinator of services to
students with disability when I was tutoring (she's probably on one of
these lists...so she can respond to my criticism if she sees fit) about the
sort of assertion that you make that the student's primary problem is not
her dyslexia, and your recourse to counselling for her "excessive
absences"and "problems mentioned above".  I don't know the student in
question  and so of course I can't rule out your assessment.  Nevertheless,
what I observed was that a lot of problems for which students were referred
for counselling  (depression, frustration, seemingly unreasonable demands,
etc...) tended to benefit greatly from effective assistance directed
towards their learning needs, and that counselling took time away from
already time-poor individuals.

 Sometimes the phrase "attitude problem" can reflect on the user.   I'm
afraid that I found that your phrase "allowed to impinge"  suggested that
this might be the case.  If this student is dyslexic, it is extremely
likely that she has had extensive experience of frustration in learning
situations throughout her life.  If she has already had to change majors
(before you came on line) she has had a year of frustration, and from your
proposed solutions she may realise that she's in line for no real change in
that respect.  

Based on the information you provide, I am frankly amazed at your
"excessive absences" comment and at your referring her to counselling.  If
in fact she has experienced a death in the family and illness within the
last month, that seems to me like a pretty heavy burden to add to those of
dyslexia and the beginning of term.   Maybe she's legitimately unhappy with
the way in which things are going in her life.   Are her demands really
unreasonable? 

5.   The issue of test format has been a critical one for many dislexic
students.  Their requests for different types of assessment may well be
quite legitimate, rather than the"I'm disabled give me what I want"
confrontation that you seem to represent it as being.  May I refer you to a
quite good university policy concerning the rights of students with
disability?   It's available on the Web at
<http://www.mcgill.ca/StuServ/osd/devel.htm >, and includes accommodation
in test format as a student's right.     Perhaps her suggestion about
summaries is a tad unrealistic, but there may be some middle ground that is
reachable.  Very often I found that students with disabilities had devised
some effective strategies to help themselves that I could develop further
to good effect.  I also found that most of them were surprised when I
acknowledged their ability to develop strategies of their own;  I found
their surprise rather suggestive about the --that word again--attitudes of
my predecessors.

Was that really her phrase, anyhow,  or is it your paraphrase?  Might it
have been  more like, "I'm disabled.  These are my legitimate needs if I'm
to learn in university."?    In my experience, students with disabilities
are, quite  justifiably, pretty offended at the suggestion that they're
recipients of charity when accommodations are made for their learning
needs.  If they've been admitted to university, presumably they've met its
admission standards.  It should then be incumbent on the university to
provide access to the learning that they provide all students. 

6.  Finally, re your suggestion that she switch majors once more, to
special ed.  Two comments:

(a.) One of the most exasperating things that students with disabilities
encounter is the tendency of counsellors to redirect their interests to
something that the counsellors perceive as  more in line with their
disability.   It's astonishing how often this happens and how often the
suggestions are miles off base.  As I look about me, at other academics,
who are presumably successful learners (I'll just take the ones who either
have doctorates or are very near completion.), it amazes me how often their
is an evident discongruity  between significant traits in our personalities
 and our scholarly interests....Had a well meaning counsellor intervened
successfully (?) at an early stage in our careers a great deal of expertise
would have been lost to the world. Why should your student do better in
special ed?  Just because she herself has special needs doesn't seem to me
to have any real bearing on the matter.  Again it seems to me to be an
inappropriate strategy.  Your student has been admitted to university to
learn.  I can't see what can justify restricting the areas in which she
should be able to do so.  

(b)    She might well be of more use to students with disabilities as a
dyslexic with real competence in English.  When I was tutoring, it was
evident to me that, although my special ed background was useful to *me* in
enabling me to recognise  some of the difficulties students were
experiencing, my  previous strong arts background was more useful to
*them*.  Part of the problem that I see with special education is its
concentration on learning exceptionalities (read, limitations) and its
failure to produce instructors who have any competence in the *content* of
learning.  Small wonder, then,  that so many of us are charged with
imposing limitations on student learning...rather than supporting it.

I realise that the tone of the above is very critical.  I make no
apologies;  I hope it will be taken as it was intended, constructively.
Finally, I sincerely hope that you succeed in "leveling the playing field"
for this student and for all who come to you for assistance.

As you said, "Whew!"

Best regards, 

Elizabeth Bredberg, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Faculty of Education
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia


>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 14:16:00 +0000 (+5E)
>From: "Malka, Sharon" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: aednet <[log in to unmask]>,
>    dis-forum <[log in to unmask]>,
>    'disability-dialogues' <[log in to unmask]>,
>    spedtalk <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: adult dyslexia
>
>
>Thank you all for such prompt responses.
>
>The student in question has problems in her life right now other than her
>dyslexia which are being allowed to impinge on her education. If dyslexia
>were the major issue (and I am not convinced that it is) then all (or most)
>of your suggestions either have been, or would have been acted upon (e.g.
>books on tape, DragonDictate, etc.).  There seems to be an attitude problem
>on the part of the student (I am disabled, give me what I want) in several
>classes, an attendance problem (sickness, grandfather died, and one
>unexcused...has missed 5 out of 7 classes and not requested the make up
>work), an overload of courses (2 of which are English Lit courses). Said
>student had started out as a science major and then switched to English
>Education when unable to do the science work. I came on board in the middle
>of the summer and first heard from this student  September 9th.
>
>Ths is what I am suggesting:
>1. student withdraw from this particular course for now, and, when we
>receive the books on tape from RFB&D, she continue the reading with me as I
>tutor her in comprehension and test taking strategies. She can then take the
>course next semester.
>2. student work on solving her personal and health problems now that she has
>one course less and more time.
>3. student attend counseling sessions with support staff to address
>excessive absences, problems mentioned above and any other areas that she
>might want to address.
>4. student look into spec ed teaching rather than English ed teaching since
>she wants to work with public school students with disabilities.
>5. student to look into requesting books on tape the semester before she
>needs them or over the summer in order to ensure that she has them in time
>to begin the semester and perhaps to get a jump start?
>
>It was interesting to me to hear all of your responses and I do thank you
> greatly. I feel that I am part of a team here at this college and that
>instructors are part of that team. Just as I value my students' input, I
>value my instructors' input, too. Certainly, the presence of a disabled
>student in a classroom does not  mean that academic standards should be
>changed or lowered. None of my students want that. It is, therefore,
>incumbent upon me, as the learning support specialist, to make sure that the
>accommodation will, in fact, "level the playing field."  In this case, in my
>judgment, there are too many other mitigating factors for that to be true.
>
>I welcome your comments and/or constructive critiques
>
>Whew (wiping my brow)
>
>Sharon
>
>


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