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Phoenix, Arizona is home to one of the premier public research universities in the country: Arizona State University (ASU). More than 50,000 students are enrolled among the three campuses in metropolitan Phoenix. The university champions diversity, and is international in scope, welcoming students from all 50 states and nations across the globe.
ASU is an active partner with the private sector in initiatives to enhance the social well-being, economic competitiveness, cultural depth, and quality of life of metropolitan Phoenix and beyond. Thus it was that ASU was chosen as one of the two universities to pilot the Library Technology Access (LTA) initiative with HP.
ASU has an active program to assist students with disabilities. The Disability Resource Center for Academic Access and Achievement has more than 1,400 registered members. The center works closely with Arizona State University Libraries ADA Services office, which oversees the usage of the two HP LTA workstations designed for people with disabilities.
The LTA workstations are installed at the Charles T. Hayden Library, the university's largest library. Ginny Sylvester is head of Access Services at the Hayden Library, and Jodie Milam is the supervisor of ADA Services. They are both very pleased with the early results of making the LTA workstations available to the student community.
"We have a real commitment to help our users with disabilities," explains Ms. Sylvester. "Our library has a facility set aside just for people with disabilities." This room has eight accessible workstations in all. The HP LTA workstations are a good complement to the other computers as they offer different kinds of software and peripherals that the library didn't have before.
The library uses a display case to show people what assistive technology is available. They can take it out and try it to see if it meets their needs. "We find that patrons come in and try new equipment on the workstations. Once they find the configurations they like, they return often to that particular workstation," says Ms. Milam.
For example, one frequent patron is a student with low vision. He uses the Kurzweil 3000 reader on the Compaq Evo PC. This allows him to see diagrams and text on the screen and to copy and paste text from the screen to his personal documents. Another student has cerebral palsy which results in limited use of his hands. He finds he likes to use the joystick mouse with the Compaq Evo PC, easing his task of doing research for his classes.
Graduate student Jessicah Newton is thrilled with the completeness of the configurations of the HP LTA workstations. She is blind and has struggled in the past due to not having all the necessary assistive programs and equipment together in one place. "The HP workstations have eliminated the need for me to carry around heavy laptops, cables and connectors," says Ms. Newton. "Scanning a document for editing, reading virtually any printed material, converting files for brailling and/or editing, and even working with professional databases and having complicated information at my fingertips — these tasks are now possible for me."
Ms. Newton adds, "Perhaps the most important point here is not the physical aspect of what has been provided, or even the logistical aspect of how tasks are completed, but an indescribable sense of pride at being able to perform tasks independently, with little or no sighted intervention. This has been an exciting addition to our library, and, in my opinion, an important one. This workstation has ended a long transitional period where resources were scattered and disconnected." In addition to pursuing her doctoral degree in Educational Psychology, Ms. Newton is a teaching assistant who oversees 106 students. "I truly believe that without our new workstations, my task, as a teaching assistant, would have been impossible."
Of course, making the impossible truly possible involves bringing all the right pieces together. The typical configuration of the HP LTA workstations includes the Windows XP operating system (OS), which is optimized with special accessibility features. ASU, however, chose to install Windows 2000 on the PCs instead. Kirk Manegold is the technology support analyst assigned to the Hayden Library. "The issue of bringing Windows XP-based workstations into our network was more organizational than technical," says Mr. Manegold. "Windows 2000 is still the standard OS for our library network, and the majority of our local-access-only database applications. We were concerned with the impact of a new OS on our manpower and our ability to support both Windows 2000 and XP." Mr. Manegold explains that the workaround was simply to install Windows 2000 on the LTA workstations instead of XP. If they hadn't, says Mr. Manegold, "it would not be possible to maintain the same level of support for these workstations as for our other Windows 2000-based workstations." For Arizona State University, installing Windows 2000 on the LTA workstations did not impact the assistive technology that came with the PCs.
This demonstrates the flexibility in choosing the optimal configurations of the HP LTA workstations. A library can select the operating system, the applications software, and the peripheral devices that best meet its needs as well as the needs of the patrons. HP's LTA technology partner TransAccess has tested and selected the range of equipment and software that are on the "recommended" list, making the choices easy for the library.
Now that students have returned for the fall semester, Ms. Sylvester expects that usage of the LTA workstations will really pick up. In August, Ms. Milam held an open house to demonstrate the equipment to new students, and the online webinars will get the new users on their way to a productive year at ASU.
For more information on the Arizona State University Libraries ADA Services, please visit http://www.asu.edu/lib/ada/.
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