The plan's mission statement is to address the inequity in educational achievement. Although the draft plan is to be commended for its vision and timeline, it fails to note ‘disability’ as a minority group in a commitment to ensure that students are ready to graduate from high school to go on to further study or careers “regardless of race, income, or neighborhood”.
The Burton Blatt Institute sees this as an “assumption by the Department’s Office of Educational Technology that it is acceptable or inevitable for disability to be a determining factor in whether a child graduates from high school ready to succeed”. Meanwhile, the National Association of Blind Lawyers, despite endorsing the plan, calls on further specific action to ensure that accessibility is incorporated into the plan’s implementation.
Similar comments were made by MAA’s Education Manager, Anne McGrath, to the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA) after the release of both the K-10 and Senior Years 11 -12 Draft National Curriculums. Students with sensory impairment were not overtly recognised by ACARA as a specific group, and Ms McGrath voiced concern over the need for education systems to cater inclusively for these students’ needs, especially in regard to the availability of accessible electronic media.
The Burton Blatt Institute also stated that the plan “misses the tremendous opportunity to focus on accessibility of digital resources through mainstream technologies, rather than access through special, expensive assistive technology”. MAA’s Classroom Access Project is seeking to address such issues with its second ‘model classroom’ pilot operating now at Cerdon College Merrylands, a school in the Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta.
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