Pros, Cons of Online Learning for Students With Disabilities

Online learning can provide a practical, workable option for diverse populations of learners, including students with various kinds of disabilities.

Attending an online college offers flexibility, convenience and privacy. Various assistive devices and applications can help students consume information in formats that align with their needs. Before pursuing a degree online, though, be sure to consider the pros and cons.

Pros

One of the advantages of online learning is that students with compromised mobility can avoid the challenges of travel and negotiating the confines of a campus classroom. Instead, they can design their own study space at home to accommodate their range of motion.

Those less able to control their hands and feet because of cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy or Lou Gehrig's disease can dictate text or email using voice-activated programs or speech-recognition programs like Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Eye-tracking technologies like Tobii use the iris to issue commands to a computer that then speaks for the user.

Another pro is that freedom from fixed class schedules allows students with psychological or psychiatric disabilities, or post-traumatic stress disorder or cyclical mood disorders the flexibility to map study times according to fluctuations in receptivity.

Students with Asperger's syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders, or who otherwise struggle socially, can avoid large classroom settings and instead work in familiar, comfortable settings, such as at home. Communicating via forums and social media removes the pressure of interacting with others for students who are uncomfortable speaking in front of a crowd or who need time to assemble their thoughts.

Online programs also free students with learning disabilities like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD; dyslexia; visual processing disorder; or dysgraphia from the time pressure, stress and aural or visual overstimulus and distractions of the traditional classroom. Working at home at their own pace, students can review materials and often as needed and manipulate digital text to process information.

In addition, digital texts, subtitled lectures and forum- and email-based communications open doors for students with hearing disabilities.

Finally, rather than navigating a physical campus, students with low or no vision can capture class lectures with hand-held digital voice recorders and note-taking apps like AudioNote. Screen reader software, including the open-source NVDA and JAWS, or Job Access With Speech, provides text-to-speech output or a Braille display.

With advanced screen readers, students can navigate text with commands like "announce cursor position" and "refresh page." The Mobile Lorm Glove enables people who are deaf and blind to transmit Lorm, a "tactile alphabet," to text on a computer or mobile device.

Cons

Despite the advantages of online learning, students with disabilities still face hurdles.

For instance, instructors cannot make special accommodations for individual students without accommodation letters from the university disability services office. It is up to students to request such letters and then wait for the accommodations to be put in place.

Additionally, digital-based online programs assume students can navigate that content. But some learning management systems challenge students with print disabilities or physical, cognitive or other impairments.

Not all e-texts are keyboard friendly or accessible and may have a proprietary format that those with visual, motor or physical or sensory limitations cannot easily access. For students with motor neuron disease but have visual acuity, pop-ups and overlays can make web browsing problematic. For those with photosensitive epilepsy, flashing lights or images may cause seizures.

In addition, those with low vision or color blindness may have challenges viewing certain colors, fonts and formats. Dynamic e-learning content, like enhancements to e-texts such as videos and graphics that change as a user rolls over or clicks on different parts, can be problematic for those with other visual problems.

In video-based material, students may not comprehend every nonverbalized action, and captions can't tell the whole story. Assume, for instance, that people talk at 150 words per minute. Even if captions are 99 percent accurate, that means that three words are inaccurate every two minutes, or 15 wrong words per 10-minute video.

Furthermore, visual aids like screen readers and audio transcribers may require higher bandwidth than students may have at home. Punctuation tends to be inconsistent from one screen reader to another, and not all marks translate. And keeping pace with improvements means regularly updating software, which can be costly with specialist screen readers.

There are also the cultural and linguistic challenges. Online learning doesn't mask all differences in educational styles, social customs and body language. Chat environments styles can vary, seem strident and intimidating, and thus risk alienating or marginalizing students of different cultures.

The takeaway: Be clear with yourself and with your school about your needs and expectations. Research whether a given set of adaptations at your proposed school will work given your technical, logistical and personal needs. Then speak up – your input can help improve the online learning culture for others.