[Federal Register Volume 59, Number 164 (Thursday, August 25, 1994)] [Unknown Section] [Page 0] From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] [FR Doc No: 94-20971] [[Page Unknown]] [Federal Register: August 25, 1994] _______________________________________________________________________ Part VII Department of Education _______________________________________________________________________ National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research; Notice DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research AGENCY: Department of Education. ACTION: Notice of Proposed Funding Priorities for Fiscal Years 1995- 1996 for Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Secretary proposes funding priorities for new Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) under the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) for fiscal years 1995-1996. The Secretary takes this action to focus research attention on areas of national need. These priorities are intended to improve rehabilitation services and outcomes for individuals with disabilities. DATES: Comments must be received on or before September 26, 1994. ADDRESSES: All comments concerning these proposed priorities should be addressed to David Esquith, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Switzer Building, Room 3424, Washington, D.C. 20202-2601. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: David Esquith. Telephone: (202) 205- 8801. Individuals who use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) may call the TDD number at (202) 205-5516. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This notice contains three proposed priorities under the RERC program for research on children with orthopedic impairments, research on low vision and blindness, and research on universal telecommunications access. Authority for the RERC program of NIDRR is contained in section 204(b)(3) of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended (29 U.S.C. 760- 762). Under this program the Secretary makes awards to public and private agencies and organizations, including institutions of higher education, Indian tribes, and tribal organizations, to conduct research, demonstration, and training activities regarding rehabilitation technology in order to enhance opportunities for meeting the needs of, and addressing the barriers confronted by, individuals with disabilities in all aspects of their lives. An RERC must be operated by or in collaboration with an institution of higher education or a nonprofit organization. These proposed priorities support the National Education Goals that call for all children in America to start school ready to learn and for every adult American to possess the skills necessary to compete in a global economy. Under the regulations for this program (see 34 CFR 353.32) the Secretary may establish research priorities by reserving funds to support particular research activities. The Secretary will announce the final priorities in a notice in the Federal Register. The final priorities will be determined by responses to this notice, available funds, and other considerations of the Department. Funding of a particular project depends on the final priorities, the availability of funds, and the quality of the applications received. The publication of these proposed priorities does not preclude the Secretary from proposing additional priorities, nor does it limit the Secretary to funding only these priorities, subject to meeting applicable rulemaking requirements. Note: This notice of proposed priorities does not solicit applications. A notice inviting applications under this competition will be published in the Federal Register concurrent with or following the notice of final priorities. Description of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center Program RERCs carry out research or demonstration activities by: (1) Developing and disseminating innovative methods of applying advanced technology, scientific achievement, and psychological and social knowledge to (a) solve rehabilitation problems and remove environmental barriers, and (b) study new or emerging technologies, products, or environments; (2) demonstrating and disseminating (a) innovative models for the delivery of cost-effective rehabilitation technology services to rural and urban areas, and (b) other scientific research to assist in meeting the employment and independent living needs of individuals with severe disabilities; or (3) facilitating service delivery systems change through (a) the development, evaluation, and dissemination of consumer-responsive and individual and family centered innovative models for the delivery to both rural and urban areas of innovative cost-effective rehabilitation technology services, and (b) other scientific research to assist in meeting the employment and independent needs of individuals with severe disabilities. The statute requires that each applicant for a grant, including an RERC, demonstrate how its proposed activities address the needs of individuals from minority backgrounds who have disabilities. Each RERC must provide training opportunities to individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to become researchers of rehabilitation technology and practitioners of rehabilitation technology in conjunction with institutions of higher education and nonprofit organizations. General The Secretary proposes that the following requirements apply to the RERCs pursuant to these absolute priorities unless noted otherwise: The RERC (except the RERC on universal telecommunications access) must have the capability to design, build, and test prototype devices and assist in the transfer of successful solutions to the marketplace. The RERC must evaluate the efficacy and safety of its new products, instrumentation, or assistive devices. The RERC must provide graduate-level research training to build capacity for engineering research in the rehabilitation field and to provide training in the applications of new technology to service providers and to individuals with disabilities and their families. The RERC must develop all training materials in formats that will be accessible to individuals with various types of disabilities and communication modes, and widely disseminate findings and products to individuals with disabilities and their families and representatives, service providers, manufacturers and distributors, and other appropriate target populations. The RERC must involve individuals with disabilities, persons from minority backgrounds with disabilities and, if appropriate, their family members in planning and implementing the research, development, and training programs, in interpreting and disseminating the research findings, and in evaluating the Center. The RERC must share information and data, and, as appropriate, collaborate on research and training with other NIDRR-supported grantees including, but not limited to, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Disability and Business Technical Assistance Centers and other related RERCs and RRTCs. The RERC must work closely with the RERC on Technology Evaluation and Transfer at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Priority Under 34 CFR 75.105(c)(3) the Secretary proposes to give an absolute preference to applications that meet the following priorities. The Secretary proposes to fund under this competition only applications that meet these absolute priorities. Proposed Priority 1: Technology for Children With Orthopedic Disabilities Background Children who sustain traumatic injury, congenital anomalies or disease-induced anomalies may require prosthetic devices for missing limbs and orthotic devices for support and correction. Because children are growing rapidly, their prosthetic and orthotic devices must be designed to satisfy their special developmental needs. Too often, children's devices are scaled-down versions of adult devices. New composite materials such as graphite, carbon fiber/carbon matrix, and fiber-reinforced ceramics have much to offer in prosthetic and orthotic design and practice because they are lightweight and durable. These factors are especially important for young children. However, composite materials require different manufacturing techniques than those used to form metals. The special configurations of these devices require special construction methods to produce devices that are safe and effective and competitively priced. In addition, most composite materials are hard to re-shape once they are made. This interferes with the fitting of devices that need to be adjusted for each child. Techniques for adjusting the shape of composite material devices need to be developed. The neuromuscular and musculoskeletal development of growing children presents a significant challenge to those practitioners who provide children with prosthetic and orthotic devices. The devices must meet the prevailing needs of the child as well as adjust to the child's physical growth for a reasonably long period of time. Most orthotic/prosthetic facilities have difficulty meeting these challenges. This is compounded by the fact that children who need these services are not evenly distributed throughout the country, and there are few service providers in some geographic areas. In addition, some practitioners and parents have limited access to a variety of devices. As a result, they are not in a position to sample a number of devices and select the one that is most appropriate. For example, the electric hand often appeals to a parent because it looks and acts like a real hand. An experimental fitting and practical comparison may persuade parents and child that benefits of hook design outweigh the cosmetic appeal of the electric hand. Inexpensive opportunities to try out various prostheses need to be increased. Proposed Priority An RERC on technology and children with orthopedic disabilities shall--Develop and evaluate prosthetic and orthotic devices and related orthopedic procedures to meet the changing needs of growing children with neuromuscular and musculoskeletal impairments; Identify and assess the suitability of materials for use in these devices, including composite materials, considering the weight, strength, durability, adaptability, techniques of fabrication, cost and cosmetic acceptability; Develop improved methods for fabricating assistive devices for children, including those using composite materials; Evaluate the effectiveness of the systems of delivery of prosthetic and orthotic devices and closely related assistive technology to children with orthopedic impairments and develop recommendations to improve the current systems; Identify, develop, and evaluate models to enable children and families, as well as clinicians, to test prosthetic and orthotic devices for suitability prior to purchase; Identify the unique barriers to effective service delivery for prosthetic and orthotic devices facing families of children with orthopedic disabilities from minority backgrounds and develop strategies for overcoming those barriers; and Develop and implement strategies to increase the participation of children with orthopedic impairments and their parents in identifying user needs for prosthetic and orthotic devices and future areas of research. Proposed Priority 2: Technology for Low Vision and Blindness Background The National Center for Health Statistics and other authorities variously estimate the number of legally blind persons in the United States at 400,000 to 600,000, with another 1.4 million persons severely visually impaired. More than 10 million others have some visual impairment that cannot be further improved with corrective lenses. There are also large and rapidly increasing numbers of older individuals with impairments in contrast, binocularity, and adaptation, which significantly limit their performance in a wide variety of everyday tasks. Technological innovations arising from the development of new scientific and medical knowledge can have a positive impact on the lives of persons with low vision or blindness. While progress has been made regarding educational and vocational aids, optical amplifiers for low vision, orientation and mobility aids, and improved functional vision assessment, the need remains for improvements in these areas. For example, there is a need for new and innovative adaptive devices and development of systems engineering solutions to assist in our efforts to prepare all children with low vision and blindness to enter school ready to learn through early identification, monitoring, and treatment of visual impairments in neonates and infants. A report of the Technology Research Working Group stemming from the NIDRR Project Directors Meeting in January 1994, identified the need for technology to improve access to visual displays, including flat panel displays and devices that use liquid crystal displays with low contrast. Research is also needed to maintain access to new products with advancing technology used in the home, workplace, and the community, such as solid state displays, keypads, and compact disc technology. Vision-related research is needed to provide access to public facilities and mass transit. One of the main problems for persons who are blind or visually impaired is locating the facility in question (e.g., the bus stop, the subway entrance, ticket vending machine, telephone, bathrooms, etc.), or for orientation and mobility in large open areas or closed crowded spaces. New techniques for orientation and mobility will increase independent mobility for persons with blindness and low vision and decrease dependance on others for information and assistance. There is also a need to research, develop, and evaluate new and adaptive technology for persons with deaf-blindness, including tactile communications for devices such as emergency alarms, doorbells, and TDD phones. Captioning technology and systems have been developed to provide audio information in visual form for persons who are deaf. A need exists for these same types of technology and systems to provide visual information in audio form for persons who are blind. As technology becomes increasingly graphic in nature, especially with the proliferation of computer-generated imagery, persons who are blind or who have low vision are increasingly at risk of being denied access to communication formats that are high in graphic content. The feasibility of descriptive video has been investigated (Technical Viability of Descriptive Video Services, June 1990, prepared for U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs). A need exists to advance this technology in order to increase utilization of descriptive video by persons with low vision and blindness. Proposed Priority An RERC on low vision and blindness shall-- Develop technology and methods for the detection, monitoring, and diagnosis of visual impairments in neonates and infants; Develop technology and methods for orientation and mobility in large open areas, including map reading, or crowded rooms for persons with blindness or low vision; Develop reduced-cost engineering solutions for increasing utilization of descriptive video; Develop technology and methods for improving access to visual displays, including flat panel displays (e.g., develop an adaptive template overlay technology for flat panel displays), found in the home, in the community, and at work such as automatic teller machines, home appliances, stereo equipment, and other devices that use LCD and LED technologies; Develop technology to maintain access to new products with advancing technology used in the home, workplace, and the community, such as solid state displays, keypads, and compact disc technology; Develop technology, such as emergency alarms, doorbells, and TDD phones, for persons with deaf-blindness to assist them in their activities of daily living; Develop technology and methods for improving access by persons with low vision or blindness to electronic information systems; and Develop an engineering design review method for application to proposed new technology projects that first considers commercially available or universal design interfaces before developing orphan technology for individuals with low vision and blindness. Proposed Priority 3: Universal Telecommunications Access Background Generally speaking, individuals with communication disabilities are those with a hearing, vision, speech, or neurological impairment, or a combination of such impairments. This priority proposes a program of research to promote greater access to emerging telecommunications technology by individuals who have communication disabilities. The coming decade is likely to bring advances in the way people communicate over distances. Access to greater bandwidth in the telephone network will lead to new advances, new devices and new services, such as switched video, TV-phones, or voice-to-print (Hinton, OSEP Final Report, ``Advanced Technologies for Benefit to Persons with Sensory Disabilities,'' 1992). Already low-cost facsimile technology, answering machines, and voice mail are changing office communications. Computer-based information services abound, and telephones themselves are no longer standard. Persons with speech impairments are increasingly at a disadvantage with voice recognition and voice mail telecommunication systems because they are designed for standard speech which is clear and contains prosody information. The employment status, social, and family life of persons with disabilities could be affected by their access to advances in telecommunications. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires private employers, State and local governments, employment agencies, labor unions, and joint labor-management committees to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities, including those with communication disabilities. The ADA also requires State and local governments and public accommodations to make available auxiliary aids and services available where necessary to ensure effective communication. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, requires the Secretary, through the Director of the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, and the Administrator of the General Services Administration, to ``develop and establish guidelines for Federal agencies for electronic and information technology accessibility designed to ensure, regardless of the type of medium, that individuals with disabilities can produce information and data, and have access to information and data, comparable to the information and data, and access, respectively, of individuals who are not individuals with disabilities.'' Section 508 also provides that the guidelines ``shall be revised, as necessary, to reflect technological advances or changes.'' Past efforts in opening up developing technology to include access for persons with communication disabilities have been retrospective rather than prospective. Too frequently telecommunications technologies are developed and become widely used before consumers who have communication disabilities become aware of the barriers they inadvertently contain. There is a need to affect the development of telecommunications technology, regulations, and standards in order to promote the incorporation of universal design features. Furthermore, there is a need to communicate information routinely to appropriate researchers, manufacturers, and other major contributors to communication technology that will contribute to the development of accessible telecommunications devices and systems. The need for special customer-premised equipment will be reduced when international standards include features that make general-market products accessible to persons with communications disabilities. Technological advances in the field of telecommunications, both in this country and internationally, have the potential to represent either new opportunities to disabled people or new barriers. This proposed RERC shall work closely with developers and manufacturers to enhance awareness of how emerging telecommunications developments can be modified to incorporate features that are directly responsive to the special needs of individuals with communication disabilities. Applicants for this priority must demonstrate knowledge of the history and present roles of various Government agencies in telecommunications and electronic equipment accessibility, such as NIDRR, the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), the General Services Administration (GSA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA). Applicants must also demonstrate a knowledge of other NIDRR-funded programs studying issues of persons with communications impairments as well as related information databases, private national and international organizations, such as the United States Telephone Association and the Telecommunications Industries Association and the International Telecommunication Union's Technology unit (ITU-T). Proposed Priority An RERC on universal telecommunications access shall-- Undertake a systems engineering analysis of emerging telecommunications technology (such as signal compression, analog to digital systems transitions, satellite transmission, development of a national information infrastructure, telecommunity living, voice-to- print, Mosaic and Windows multimedia interfaces, etc.) to identify potential technological barriers and marketplace disincentives for persons with communication disabilities, and, based on these analyses, identify and develop universal design strategies to avoid these barriers; Develop an engineering design review methodology for dissemination to designers that encourages universal access designs in the development of technology; Develop or evaluate innovative applications of telecommunication technology to enable individuals with disabilities to be more independent at home, in the community, and at work, including, but not limited to, voice mail, videophones, cellular phones, descriptive video, speech clarification, etc; Identify and develop accessible design characteristics for telecommunications technology and services and provide appropriate industries and agencies with the results of this research; Develop engineering test methods and labeling requirements to facilitate development of improved technical specifications to enhance accessibility in equipment, services, signaling, transmission, and other aspects of telecommunications, with immediate emphasis on improving relay devices and cooperating with agencies responsible for national and international and other industry group standards; Develop model training programs and materials on the use and capacities of new and emerging telecommunications technologies; and In the second year of the grant, investigate applications of telecommunications technology to improve access to mainstream educational programming for students with disabilities, especially students in economically disadvantaged areas. Invitation To Comment Interested persons are invited to submit comments and recommendations regarding this proposed priority. All comments submitted in response to this notice will be available for public inspection, during and after the comment period, in Room 3424, Switzer Building, 330 C Street S.W., Washington, D.C., between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday of each week except Federal holidays. Applicable Program Regulations 34 CFR Parts 350 and 353. Program Authority: 29 U.S.C. 760-762. Dated: August 22, 1994. Judith E. Heumann, Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. (Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Number 84.133E, Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers). [FR Doc. 94-20971 Filed 8-24-94; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4000-01-P