Intervention in School and Clinic

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Making Online Learning Accessible: Using Technology to Declutter the Web

Stein Brunvand and Heidi Abadeh
Intervention in School and Clinic 2010 45: 304
DOI: 10.1177/1053451209359075
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Making Online Learning Accessible

Using Technology to Declutter the Web
Stein Brunvand and Heidi Abadeh

The proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies has made it possible for teachers to create a variety of engaging online
learning activities for students of all ages. However, for students with learning disabilities, the prospect of having
to search, read, and analyze information online can be overwhelming. This article reviews a variety of tools and
techniques that teachers can use to help make online learning more manageable for students with disabilities.
These free tools focus on removing the clutter and distractions often found online and helping direct student attention towards the relevant content.
Keywords: online learning; learning disabilities; adaptive tools; Web 2.0

tudents today are often referred to as digital natives

(Prensky, 2001) because of the world of Web 2.0 technologies in which they are being raised. They use computers and other Web-enabled devices to access information,
communicate with others, participate in online networks,
contribute content to the Web, and much more. It is
acknowledged that schools need to provide students with
technology-enhanced learning experiences in order to better prepare these digital natives for the workforce (Office
of Technology Assessment, 1995). This includes helping
students develop the necessary skills required to be proficient online learners. Many states have moved towards
implementing online learning requirements to encourage
the teaching of these skills. In 2007, Michigan became the
first state to require a sustained online learning experience
by stipulating that all students must be exposed to at least
20 hours of online learning before graduation (Michigan
Department of Education, 2007). Although the Internet
provides many opportunities for learning, it also has
numerous distractions that can easily derail a students
304

attempt to focus on an educational objective. The impact

of these distractions is amplified for students with learning
disabilities. This article provides a review of several different technologies and strategies that can be used to make
information and online learning more accessible to students with and without learning disabilities.

Impact of Technology on
Teaching and Learning
In the classroom, computers and Web-based technologies are having a profound influence on the way
teachers instruct and students learn. Using technology to
Authors Note: Correspondence should be addressed to Stein
Brunvand, University of Michigan-Dearborn, 19000 Hubbard, D7
Fairlane Center South, Dearborn, MI 48126; e-mail: sbrunvan@
umd.umich.edu.
Intervention in School and Clinic, Volume 45 Number 5, May 2010 304-311
DOI: 10.1177/1053451209359075 2010 Hammill Institute on Disabilities
http://isc.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

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Brunvand, Abadeh / Making Online Learning Accessible 305

augment a variety of teaching and learning strategies can

enhance student learning (Goldberg, Russell, & Cook,
2003; Myers & Beach, 2004; Nicolaou, Nicolaidou,
Zacharia, & Constantinou, 2007; Schacter, 1999) and
have a positive impact on the pedagogy exhibited by the
teacher (Becker & Ravitz, 1999). For instance, there is a
greater emphasis on student-centered verbal interactions
in classrooms where technology is more fully integrated
(Page, 2002). The positive impact of technology in the
classroom extends to typical students as well as their
peers who may struggle with various learning disabilities (Keates, Clarkson, & Robinson, 2002; Shneiderman,
2000). The use of technology for students with learning
disabilities has been shown to have a positive impact on
logical reasoning (Grossen & Carnine, 1990), promotion
of self-esteem (Ryba, Selby, & Nolan, 1995), social
learning and connections with peers (Hasselbring &
Williams-Glaser, 2000), and improvement of overall
writing quality (MacArthur, 1996). This article looks to
build upon this existing research by offering a series of
technologies and strategies that can be used to de-clutter
the Web and support students as they read, research, and
analyze information online.

Barriers to Technology
One of the primary barriers to student use of technology is the lack of access to computers in the classroom
(Becker, 2000; Norris, Sullivan, Poirot, & Soloway,
2003). Other common barriers include a lack of adequate time for training and planning (Duffield, 1997;
Lan, 2000), a resistance to change ones own instructional approach (Beacham, 1994; Cuban, 1986), teacher
perceptions of student ability (Becker, 2000), and a general lack of funding. The pedagogical strategies and
technology tools reviewed in this article will not miraculously put more computers into classrooms, but they will
help address the other barriers mentioned above by providing access to free resources that can easily be used to
differentiate instruction for all students. The tools presented in this article are intuitive and broadly applicable
to a wide range of content areas, making them easy to
use and implement across the curriculum without extensive training. In addition, all of the sites reviewed in this
article are free and work in multiple browsers (e.g.,
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) and with all the major
computer operating systems (e.g., Windows, Mac,
Linux), which makes them desirable to teachers and
easier to integrate. Some of the tools require the teacher to
create an account, but it is not necessary for students to
have accounts to be able to learn and benefit from all
that these resources have to offer.

The tools reviewed in this article provide teachers

with a variety of ways to make online learning and information more accessible to all students through the use of
intuitive and free resources. However, it is important to
note that the specific tools reviewed may only enjoy a
short existence considering the frequency with which
Web 2.0 companies come and go. Whereas certain
names may seem dominant today (e.g., Google in the
area of search), there is no guarantee that these same
companies will survive and continue to provide the services they offer indefinitely. It is acknowledged that
some of the specific tools reviewed in this article may
not be available in the near future for any number of
reasons, but it is reasonable to expect that the features
and capabilities they provide will continue to be sought
after by teachers, so these types of tools will persist even
if the individual names change. Therefore, the reader is
encouraged to focus on the capabilities of the different
tools and consider how they can help improve the learning experience for students rather than concentrating
solely on the specific names that are shared.

Tools for Making Web

Content Accessible
One of the primary problems students face when trying to find information online is locating relevant sites
that contain accurate and developmentally appropriate
content. Conducting a keyword search in Google on any
number of topics often returns results numbering in the
hundreds of thousands of Web sites. This is simply too
overwhelming for students as they try to decipher the
search results, sift through the various pages, and find the
information that is most relevant to them. Teachers can
help facilitate the online search process by preselecting a
group of sites for students to access when conducting
their research. These sites can be screened for a variety of
things, including accuracy of content, reading level, page
layout, and ease of navigation, to ensure that the students
will be more successful in finding the necessary information. Sharing multiple sites with students can become
cumbersome, especially if it requires the students to successfully type in the URL address of each site. Fortunately,
there are a series of tools that are specifically designed to
help facilitate this process.

Google Custom Search Engine

If you want to provide students with an opportunity
to develop competence in conducting keyword searches,
but do not want them to have to parse through results

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306 Intervention in School and Clinic

generated from searching the entire Web, you can create

your own custom search engine through Google (http://
www.google.com/coop/cse/). To use the Google custom
search engine tool, you need a Google account, which
is free. If you already have a Google e-mail account,
known as Gmail, you can log in using that same username and password. Once you have an account, you can
pick out the sites that you want students to search, paste
the URLs for those selected sites into a simple text box
within the Google Custom Search Engine interface, and
your search engine is created.
When students search for information using your
custom search engine, the search results will only show
links to the sites you have preselected, which presents
many obvious benefits. First of all, it substantially narrows the number of results that students have to analyze
to find the information they need. This can make it
easier for students with learning disabilities or attentiondeficit disorder to attend to the search results as it presents them with a much smaller list of sites to review.
Second, the teacher can be assured that the links included
in the results will direct students to sites that are at the
appropriate reading level, have accurate content, are
easy to navigate, and are not blocked by school filters or
firewalls. Google will remove the ads that normally
appear along the side of the page if you designate that
your search engine will be used in a K-12 educational
setting. Students with certain learning disabilities find it
difficult to concentrate on the required material when a
Web page is busy with ads. By decreasing the amount
of visual interference, students can have more focused
interactions with the relevant content.
You can create multiple search engines around different topics. For instance, you could have one search
engine that only searched through sites selected for a
research project on the solar system and another search
engine that only searched sites on the Civil War. The
ability to create multiple search engines allows you to
tailor a search engine to the needs of students with
learning disabilities. For example, you could create one
search engine with fewer sites, or sites that are at a
lower reading level, for students with a learning disability and create a second search engine with more sites
and grade-level reading vocabulary for the remaining
students. In this manner, both the child with the disability and the remainder of the class could be learning the
same material but working with sites that are at their
individual levels of comprehension.
Each search engine that you create is given a unique
URL, and you only need to provide that address to your
students in order for them to be able to access the search
engine. You could also just have one main custom

search engine that you add sites to periodically, and students could use this search engine to conduct research
on a variety of topics. Multiple teachers can collaborate
on the creation of a particular search engine. To do
this, one teacher would need to create the initial search
engine and then invite his or her colleagues to join and
edit that particular engine, thereby allowing several
people the option to add relevant sites to a single search
engine. You can view, and try out, a custom search engine
by visiting the following link (i.e., http://www.google
.com/coop/cse?cx=012094629152321566053:sjh84bwx
ao4&hl=en).
This particular custom search engine was designed
to search only four different sites, each of which has
information about the solar system, with a focus on
elementary students.
Although a Google custom search engine can help to
make the process of searching the Internet more manageable, this process may still be too overwhelming for
some students, because they will be expected to enter
relevant keywords and sort through the list of sites on
the results page, even though those results will be constrained to only the preselected sites. The next several
tools are designed to help teachers share a group of
preselected sites with students without the need to
conduct a keyword search.

ShareTabs
ShareTabs is well named because it allows you to easily share a series of Web sites as tabs on a single page (see
http://sharetabs.com/). This is similar to using the tab feature found in most browsers, but the difference is that the
teacher can create the tabs for an entire class and then just
share a single URL with the class that provides them
access to those tabs. The process for creating the tabs is
quite simple. The first step is identifying the Web sites you
would like to share with students. Next, copy and paste
the URL for each of the identified sites into a box on the
ShareTabs site. Then ShareTabs creates a new link that
takes your students to a series of tabs, each of which provides access to one of the identified sites. The link created
by ShareTabs can be customized, making it possible for
the teacher to choose a URL that is easier for students to
type and remember. However, it would probably be easiest to provide access to the URL by posting it as a link
on an existing class or school Web site so that students
could just click on it rather than having to type it themselves. For students with a learning disability, easy
access to a set of URLs enhances their ability to focus
on their work instead of having to spend time typing in
the sites on their own. Some students with learning

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Brunvand, Abadeh / Making Online Learning Accessible

307

Figure 1. Screenshot from ShareTabs (http://sharetabs.com/?searchengines), highlighting tabs to Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Live Search,
AOL Search, and Ask.com.

disabilities may have a weakness in writing, which will

affect their ability to manipulate a traditional keyboard to
copy the sites correctly.
Another nice feature of this tool is that the tabs to each
site remain available to students regardless of how much
they navigate around the various sites. For instance,
Figure 1 shows a screenshot from ShareTabs that includes
a series of links to different search engines (accessible
online at http://sharetabs.com/?searchengines). Notice
the tabs at the top of the page for Google, Yahoo, MSN
Live Search, AOL Search, and Ask.com. Let us assume
that a student using this ShareTabs page decided to conduct a keyword search in Google to learn more about the
solar system. The student could click on the tab for the
Google search engine, enter his keywords, and conduct
his search. The search results would be displayed as normal within that individual tab; but the tabs for Yahoo,
MSN Live Search, AOL, and Ask.com would not be
affected, so the student could easily switch between the
search results from Google and those other tabs when
necessary. Therefore, it does not matter how deeply the
student navigates into the individual tabs, the original

sites identified by the teacher will always remain accessible, making it easier for the student to switch back and
forth between multiple Web pages and resources. Creating
a fixed set of tabs is also safer for students with a learning
disability to use because it minimizes the likelihood that
they will view a site with inappropriate content or information. ShareTabs does not require an account or registration and is free to use.

TrackStar
TrackStar is another tool you can use to share a series
of Web sites with students, but instead of creating tabs as
with ShareTabs, TrackStar lets you create a track or trail
through a collection of sites (see http://trackstar.4teachers
.org/trackstar/index.jsp). This allows the teacher to place
Web sites in a specific order, which makes it possible to
sequence the various sites in a logical fashion to support
students in their research or whatever task they are
assigned to complete. To create a track, (a) you identify
the sites you want students to view, (b) then copy and
paste the sites into TrackStar in the order you desire, and

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308 Intervention in School and Clinic

Figure 2. Screenshot of branches of government track (Track 260517), Copyright 1995-2009 ALTEC at the University of Kansas,
annotations by Shanna Gerth.

(c) TrackStar then creates a link to your track. Students

can move through the sites in the order you have identified or jump back and forth as needed. Text-based comments can be added to each site in the track, which
allows the teacher to provide additional questions and
guidance for the students in order to help support their
learning as they move through the track. Students can
also navigate within the different sites in a given track
without losing access to the entire track. This helps to
keep the learning contained within the given track and
minimizes the probability that students will navigate
away from the preselected sites.
Students with a learning disability often have difficulty
in reading, comprehension, and writing. TrackStar can
help ameliorate these difficulties by allowing the teacher
to place comments with specific sites in order to help
students better focus on the content. These comments
could also restate the salient information on the page
using language and vocabulary that is more accessible to
students with a learning disability. In addition, a teacher
could create a specific track for students with disabilities
to provide them with targeted guidance. Figure 2 shows a

screenshot from a track assembled for younger elementary students learning about the three branches of government. This track is publicly available and can be accessed
by searching for Track Number 260517 on the TrackStar
Web site. Notice along the left side of the screen the list
of sites available in this track. Teacher comments have
been added above each site as well, alerting the students
to what they may find on the specific page. TrackStar is
free to use but does require users to register with the site
to create tracks. However, students would be able to view
and access tracks without having to register or create an
account.

Tools for Annotating the Web

Tools such as ShareTabs and TrackStar are designed to
make it easier for teachers to share multiple Web sites,
but for some students the task of having to work through
multiple sites may still be overwhelming even with
the support and guidance provided by these resources.
To accommodate these students, teachers can use a variety

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Brunvand, Abadeh / Making Online Learning Accessible 309

of tools designed to annotate and highlight individual

Web sites rather than looking to share a collection of several different sites. The tools outlined below are examples
of a few resources that can be used for this purpose.

Awesome Highlighter
This is a Web-based tool that allows you to mark up a
Web page much like you would a hardcopy text using
a traditional highlighting marker (see http://www
.awesomehighlighter.com/). You can access and use it
by going to the link or by downloading a bookmarklet for
your browser that allows you to highlight pages from
anywhere on the Web. With Awesome Highlighter you
can highlight text using a variety of different colors and
add sticky notes, which can easily be resized and placed
on a Web site so that they do not block other relevant text
or content. Students are also able to hide and move notes
as needed, which gives them a level of control over the
information provided on the page. After a page has been
highlighted, Awesome Highlighter creates a new URL
address for that annotated page that can then be shared
with students. You can use this tool without an account,
and your students will be able to view your annotated
pages without having to log in or register. However, one
benefit of registering for a free account is that you are able
to go back and edit pages that you have annotated, which
is not an option if you do not have an account. To view
an annotated page, see http://awurl.com/7KSmlCtm2.
There are other annotation tools, such as WizLite
(http://wizlite.com/) and SharedCopy (http://sharedcopy
.com/), that provide a similar range of functionality. One
thing to consider when looking at these types of tools is
that some are designed for open collaboration and, therefore, allow others to add highlights and annotations to
your pages. This means that anyone with the appropriate
account can add their own comments, highlights, and
notes to your annotated pages, which may not be desirable since you would not be able to control these additional edits. In many cases, it is possible to turn off this
collaborative feature so that you can lock the page, but
it would be important to verify that before using any of
these tools in a K-12 setting. Awesome Highlighter
does not allow for this type of collaborative annotating,
making it more conducive for use by teachers.

Tools to Enhance Readability

While highlighting text and adding sticky notes may
help draw attention to relevant content, there are times
when the additional pictures, ads, and graphics on a page

will be too much of a distraction for students and make

it difficult for them to focus on the content that has been
highlighted. A tool such as Readability (http://lab.arc90
.com/experiments/readability/) or TidyRead (http://www
.tidyread.com/) can be used to de-clutter a Web site and
make it easier for students to read. Both of these tools
provide a downloadable bookmarklet that can be
installed in most major browsers. The bookmarklet for
either tool would need to be installed on each computer
that students were expected to use in order for them to
have access to it. Once the bookmarklet is installed, a
button is placed in the browser toolbar, and when students navigate to a particular page, they can click on that
button and the page will be shown only as text. These
tools work by extracting the text from a page and removing most of the images, ads, and multimedia content, so
they are best used when you want students to focus on
just reading information and not interacting with other
types of visual content. Figures 3 and 4 show a beforeand-after version of the StarChild Web site (see http://
starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system
_level1/solar_system.html).
TidyRead was used to extract the text in this particular
example. Notice how the image of the planets is still visible but the background has been changed to white, and
the image of a speaker and the corresponding audio
recording in the upper left-hand side of the page have
been removed. In addition, TidyRead gives students the
option of selecting different font sizes and picking from
four different solid background colors to make the text
more readable based on personal preferences. Students
can even print the modified page if it would be easier for
them to work with a hardcopy version of the site. Because
these readability tools are downloaded to the individual
computer, it is necessary for the student, or individual
computer user, to activate them. It is not possible for the
teacher to use TidyRead or Readability to modify a series
of Web sites and then share those modified sites directly
with students. Therefore, students would need to be
taught about these tools and shown how to use them
effectively to take full advantage of them.

Combining Tools to
Increase Accessibility
Many of the tools discussed in this article could be
used independently to promote student learning. How
ever, it is also possible to combine the use of different
tools to support students as they look for information
and read content online. For instance, a Google custom
search engine consisting of five different sites could be

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310 Intervention in School and Clinic

Figure 3. StarChild Web site before using TidyRead, from http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system_level1/solar_system

.html. (StarChild site is a service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center [HEASARC], Dr. Alan Smale [Director],
within the Astrophysics Science Division [ASD] at NASA/GSFC.)

Figure 4. StarChild Web site after using TidyRead, from http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system_level1/solar_system

.html via TidyRead (http://www.tidyread.com/).
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Brunvand, Abadeh / Making Online Learning Accessible 311

created. That custom search engine, along with the five

preselected sites, could be made available to students
through ShareTabs or TrackStar. That way, students
could choose whether they wanted to search for the
information using the custom search engine or click
through the preselected sites individually. In addition, as
students read through the various sites they could activate TidyRead or Readability as necessary to make the
different pages easier to read and the text-based content
more accessible. This level of control on both the part of
the teacher and the student allows for the active differentiation of instruction through the use of free and accessible technologies.

Conclusion
By using the tools outlined in this article, teachers are
able to provide support to students without drawing
attention to their specific needs or disabilities. In addition, these types of tools empower students by allowing
them to take control of their learning and make individual decisions about what kinds of supports they need
to utilize to be successful. Once taught how to use a tool
like TidyRead or Readability, students can make decisions about when they want to use this resource. If a
teacher creates a track of sites in Trackstar, complete
with additional explanatory comments to help students
better understand the content, each student can decide
how he or she will utilize those supplemental comments
to complete the required tasks. In many ways, these
tools can be used with existing technology-enhanced
lesson plans and do not require teachers to design brandnew Web-based activities for students. Instead, teachers
should look at utilizing the different features of these
resources to make the online learning experiences they
have already designed for students more accessible.

About the Authors

Stein Brunvand, PhD, is an assistant professor of educational technology at
the University of MichiganDearborn. His current interests include the integration of technology in K-12 settings. Heidi Abadeh, PhD, is an assistant
professor at the University of MichiganDearborn. Her current interests
include special education and Arab-American parents of children with special
needs and learning disability.

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