About:

• Columbus Hearing Impaired Program

Schools:

• A.G. Bell School

• Alpine Elementary

• Huy Elementary at Gladstone

• Dominion Middle School

• Northland High School

Student Pictures:

• PreSchool I

• PreSchool II

• Kindergarten

IDEAL Group Technology:

• History of Video Relay Services

• IDEAL Group History

• Online Conferencing

Infrastructure:

• Advanced Technology

• Ohio IT Accessibility Policy

• North America Network Traffic Monitor

News:

• Ohio Department of Education Special Education News

IDEAL Group is a privately-held 2002 spin-off from IDEAL at NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR).  IDEAL Group is an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) development and services organization focused entirely on providing the world's most advanced ICT the world has to offer in support of enhancing the quality-of-life, independence, educatability and employability of students and adults with disabilities.

1989:

Darren Kall (currently the senior Director Global User Experience at LexisNexis, and previously the program manager of the accessibility and disabilities group at Microsoft) started what became to be known as AT&T’s Employee Technical Advisory Panel (ETAP).  Darren joined AT&T in 1988 and was surprised at how inaccessible AT&T’s products were as a whole. While there were some accessible products designing for accessibility was not a unified effort across the company. While AT&T had advisory groups they focused mostly on policy and not technology.

Darren brought a personal bent with him from his home life with a family member with disabilities and his training in graduate school in cognitive and perceptual psychology.

After about a year of going through formal motions and presentations with AT&T management he gave up trying to get official funding and approval to improve the accessibility of AT&T’s products. This was the catalyst that sparked Darren into launching a grass-roots effort to enhance the accessibility of AT&T products on his own.

The original group Darren pulled together included 25 people who were interested in accessibility from many divisions within AT&T.  One of them was Betsy Dixon and another was Jim Kutsch.  Jim became the first chairman of ETAP. As Darren and his early rebels started reaching out to other AT&T employees with disabilities the organization quickly grew. Darren served as the business manager for ETAP for 10 years. He brought many AT&T projects into review where ETAP questioned, redesigned, and enlightened product teams across the company to the benefits of accessible design.

There were several spin-offs from ETAP’s efforts. They spun off regulatory efforts, architectural efforts, and formed IDEAL at AT&T, an all volunteer, employee led, not-for-profit organization focused on more effectively accommodating the needs of AT&T employees with disabilities. The motivation to bring internal AT&T communities of employees with disabilities together was that two-fold. First, AT&T’s large population of employees with disabilities represented a strong lobbying group for fairness to individuals with disabilities. Second, there was anecdotal evidence that employees with disabilities were not being treated equally or accommodated fairly.

Keep in mind that these were the days when AT&T employees were influencing the policy-makers crafting the ADA. ETAP soon began to lobby AT&T management and HR professionals showing them the business benefits of effectively accommodating employees and customers with disabilities. It was not long before it became clear that designing products with accessibility in mind and accommodating the needs of AT&T employees with disabilities became missions of their own.

Ultimately, the employee advocacy effort split-off from ETAP.  The advocacy group incorporated as a not-for-profit in the state of New Jersey and re-named itself Individuals with Disabilities Enabling Advocacy Link (IDEAL) at AT&T.  IDEAL was, from that point forward, managed entirely by AT&T employees with disabilities. IDEAL's objectives were to:

• Synthesize diverse thinking into innovative actions that yield customer benefits and competitive advantage in the area of designing accessible telecommunications products and services;

• Develop the professional and business skills of AT&T employees;

• Act as involved community citizens around the world; and,

• Provide educational leadership in support of better understanding the diverse ethnic and cultural aspects of conducting business globally.