Media Release

For Immediate Release

October 17, 2007

Break free from those barriers: Universal Liberated Learning enters new chapter

Saint Mary’s University is now collaborating with a number of major organizations in order to create a barrier free learning environment for persons with disabilities and other marginalized Canadians.

As a founding member of the international Liberated Learning Consortium, Saint Mary's University (SMU) will partner with Trent University, IBM Research, the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada (LDAC), the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (CHHA), and the Neil Squire Society in order to carry out research on how emerging technologies can increase information accessibility.

This unique research initiative has been identified as Phase II of Universal Liberated Learning.

Last year, Saint Mary’s, launched Universal Liberated Learning in an effort to engage Canada’s leading National Disability Organizations in collaborative research. The new chapter in this project, valued at $173,000, is funded through a contribution agreement with the Government of Canada’s Social Development Partnerships Program –Disability Component and Saint Mary's University. 

“The project will implement three pilot tests of speech recognition (SR) technology in educational, workplace, and virtual environments respectively,” says Keith Bain, the International Manager of Consortium. “The pilots will provide new knowledge about how SR impacts three diverse disability stakeholder groups in context: students with Learning Disabilities, employees with Hearing Disabilities, and transitional learners with Physical Disabilities.”

Bain indicates that in a traditional education setting, instructors will use specially designed SR to automatically caption classroom presentations, providing students with Learning Disabilities multi-modal access to classroom content and accessible transcripts available as “notes.” In a workplace setting, SR will facilitate real-time communication between an employee with a Hearing Disability and colleagues and/or customers. In a Virtual training program for clients with Physical Disabilities, SR will enhance the typical learning experience by providing flexibility to access course information in various ways, at any time, and from any place, thereby allowing participation of rural people with disabilities as they prepare to return to the labour market. 

“The ‘before and after’ differences in these pilots will be evaluated to measure how SR impacts information accessibility,” adds Bain. 

This project is among many that are based on a concept known as “Liberated Learning” — a new approach to fostering greater access to information using a specially designed speech recognition technology. Liberated Learning technology enables real time captioning of lecture and presentation material and simultaneously produces web accessible multimedia transcripts.

This technology, originally developed for the university classroom has already seen use in the public and corporate domains and is now poised to benefit the disabled community at large.

Liberated Learning began at the Atlantic Centre for Research, Support and Access for Students with Disabilities at Saint Mary’s in 1998 and has since grown to encompass 16 universities in a global consortium dedicated to enabling barrier free access to learning for persons with disabilities (for more information about Liberated Learning, please visit www.liberatedlearning.com). 

Since its founding 205 years ago, Saint Mary’s has always remained a leader in making education accessible for all students.

Our Community Partners:

The Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (CHHA) was formed in 1982 to be the voice of hard of hearing and deafened Canadians.  Statistics have shown that 10% of the Canadian population has some degree of hearing loss. CHHA was formed to give visibility to this invisible disability.  Our main objective is to promote self-help among hard of hearing and deafened persons and encourage support for individual and collective action. 

The Neil Squire Society is the only not-for-profit organization in Canada that for the past 20 years has used technology, knowledge and passion to empower Canadians with physical disabilities. Our work helps our clients remove obstacles and barriers so that they can live independent lives and become active members of our society.

The Learning Disabilities Association of Canada (LDAC) is a national, non-profit voluntary organization acting as the voice for persons with learning disabilities and those who support them. LDAC accomplishes its goals through public awareness about the nature and impact of learning disabilities, advocacy, research, health, education and collaborative efforts.

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For More Information:

Paul Fitzgerald
Public Affairs Officer
Saint Mary's University, Public Affairs
(902) 420.5514
E-mail: paul.fitzgerald@smu.ca
www.smu.ca