Julie Balassa, Assistant Director, Disability Services, Valencia College
Disability Area: Topic Area:
Length of Session (in hours): 2-hr
Format: Lecture
Expertise Level: Beginner
Type of session: Not provided
Summary of Session
A college is an ecosystem of people, programs, services, community. To not only provide access for but fully include all students, Assistive Technologies must be so fundamentally integrated into this ecosystem that they become as universally present as the air we breathe. This presentation will describe the institutional collaboration and inter-departmental partnerships that enable our Assistive Technologies to serve all members of the college learning community.
Abstract
Every institution is responsible for providing access to programs and services for students with disabilities. Without assistive technologies, colleges cannot carry out this responsibility. In order to satisfy individual access preferences and the requirements of the Office of Civil Rights and Department of Justice, assistive technologies must be available and working when and where students need them. Ad-hoc assistive technology accommodations managed solely by the disability services office, especially when limited to designated areas, are not optimal for learning and access. A universally designed infrastructure-level approach to the integration of assistive technologies college-wide is an essential component of a college's commitment to the learning and equal participation of its students with disabilities. In this session, we will take an in-depth look at the ways Valencia College has integrated assistive technologies into its ecosystem. In particular, we will discuss the development and maintenance of collaborative partnerships among disability services, the office of information technology, campus and college-wide administration, student affairs, academic affairs, and the technology managers of labs and classrooms, and how these partnerships support a universal design for learning approach to the setup of our assistive technologies.
Kepoints
1. Legal requirements for accessibility in general and assistive technologies in particular
2. Description of college’s technology design and how assistive technologies are incorporated into that design
3. Discussion of how the collaborative partnerships among departments supports the reliability and ready avai
Speaker Bio(s)
Julie Balassa
Julie K. Balassa earned her BA degree in Psychology from McGill University and MA degree in Education of the Deaf from Columbia University. She started her career in New York City as a teacher of the deaf and subsequently as a nationally certified interpreter for the deaf. She initiated a pilot program to teach deaf children with autism, schizophrenia, and brain injury and served as a consultant regarding the education of this population. She sat on the board of New York Metro Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID). She subsequently became a staff interpreter for the Connecticut Commission on the Deaf and Hearing Impaired, after which she relocated to Florida and worked as a freelance interpreter and desktop publisher. She joined the staff of Valencia College in 2003 as a counselor for a TRIO grant program serving students with disabilities, where in addition to her responsibilities as the grant's academic advisor she was responsible for supervising the grant’s assistive technology services, data collection systems, and tutoring program. She became college-wide coordinator of Valencia's Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, Assistive Technology Services, and Alternate Format Services in 2005 and has continued oversight of these areas since her reclassification in 2007 as college-wide Assistant Director of the college's Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD). She is the college's point of contact with publishers regarding accessibility, serves as a technical and educational resource for the OSD and for disability service providers throughout the country, and is a frequent presenter on alternate format production, assistive technologies, and on issues impacting access for students who are deaf, hard of hearing, or legally blind. She continues to hold national RID CI and CT certification and sits on the Advisory Committee of the Access Text Network.