1 Remote Access Programs to Better Integrate Individuals with Disabilities Thomas Hahn Dept. of Info. Sciences Univ. of AR at Little Rock Little Rock, AR, USA + 1 (501) 301 4890 Thomas.F.Hahn3@gmail.com Hidayat Ur Rahman Lahore Leads University Lahore, Pakistan +92-3329702722 Hidayat.Rhman@gmail.com Richard Segall Dept. of Comp. & IT Arkansas State University Jonesboro, AR, USA + 1 (870) 972-3989 rsegall@astate.edu Christoph Heim & Raphaela Brunson Business – Consulting - Services- Schwerin, Germany +49 (385) 550 83 78 info@bestercomputerservice.co m Ankush Sharma Inst. of Clinical Physiology, National Research Council, Siena-, Italy -+393318316370 ankush.sak@gmail.com Maryam Aslam Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan +92-3323177741 Maryamch67@gmail.com Ana Lara-Rodriguez Dept. de Ciencias Biologicas Universidad de los Andes Bogota, Colombia +57 321 3723159 ac.lara422@uniandes.edu.co Md. Sahidul Islam Department of Statistics University of Rajshahi, Rajshah, Bangladesh +0088 01737 272633 ripon.ru.statistics@gmail.com Neha Gupta Dept. of Comp. Science Lamar University Beaumont, TX, USA + 1 (409) 223 4571 nneha2ggupta@gmail.com Charles Stephen Embry Dept. of Info. Sciences Univ. of AR at Little Rock Little Rock, AR, USA + 1(501) 541-9073 csembry@ualr.edu Patrick Grossmann Dept. of Biostatistics Harvard University Cambridge, MA, USA + 1 (781) 859 7190 patrick@jimmy.harvard.edu Shahrukh Babar Silverback Pvt. Ltd. & RMS Inc. Islamabad, Pakistan +92 3347090717 Shahrukh.swam@gmail.com Gregory A. Skibinski Dept. of Biol. Sciences Univ. of AL in Huntsville Huntsville, AL, USA + 1 (205) 936-4040 greg.skibinski@gmail.com Fusheng Tang Dept. of App. Sciences Univ. of AR at Little Rock Little Rock, AR, USA +1 (501) 569-3507 FXTang@UALR.edu ABSTRACT Sensory impaired individuals are at a disadvantage in accessing and processing electronic information. The first author (i.e. Thomas Hahn) is legally blind due to Albinism. In this experience report we describe challenges faced by the visually impaired and explain how remote access programs in combination with voice communication programs can be used to—at least partially—compensate for those disadvantages because they don’t transmit magnification. This property is especially important to effectively train visually impaired individuals on new applications and interfaces remotely because it allows them to view exactly the same information simultaneously with their sighted trainers. Since the technical prerequisites for this information exchange, skill transfer, and knowledge acquisition approach have already been freely available for at least 7 years, but are still not widely used, this approach needs to be impressively demonstrated at conferences like this one to increase the odds that its participants will share this approach with those who could potentially benefit from it. This approach could make computer labs with expensive software not only accessible to the disabled, but instead, to everyone around the clock while saving money, which is still being spent to pay lab supervisors to keep the labs open for a few hours without losing—but instead—gaining functionality. Offering virtual remote office hours would benefit disabled and non-handicapped students and faculty alike. Providing remote access to lectures can make them available to a wider audience and thus could decrease costs for tuition. Obvious benefits of this approach for the mobility impaired and soon to be expected benefits for the hearing impaired are mentioned. Allowing faculty to remotely participate in oral exams increases choices for possible specializations. Making information more accessible to the disabled has obvious synergistic benefits for non- handicapped people alike as reflected by the importance of the concept of workforce diversification for overcoming unexpected future challenges and potential stumbling blocks. This approach makes it possible to magnify lecture presentations directly onto the screen of visually impaired students and could improve real- time interactions in the classroom. Remote access for everyone could reduce the perception of disabilities. Handicapped people could be considered early adopters because they are more in need of improvements since the present circumstances and limitations are much less acceptable to them. This article concludes by describing current bottlenecks to accessibility and information transfer, and ends with an overall optimistic outlook to the future. CCS Concepts Human-centered Computing →Accessibility • Social and professional topics →People with disabilities • Applied computing~Education Keywords Visual impairment; magnification; remote control; knowledge-, skills-, and information transfer; inclusive design; e-learning; virtual classroom; education; collaboration, tutoring Figure 1: On the right laptop screen, the normal view of the programming interface of R Studio (see https://www.r- project.org/ ) is shown. The left laptop screen shows the alterations that are necessary for me to access and process electronic information. The setting displayed here closely simulates situations when sighted people train me to learn new interfaces or to follow instructions on how to use them. 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