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Sabrina Santaniello - Curry College

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Part I-Gathering Data and Making Decisions Using a collaborative approach, complete the following information in preparation for a presentation to your colleagues on a student in your area of...

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Kirk Behnke - Singapore Keynote (Part 1)

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Kirk Behnke - Singapore Keynote (Part 1)

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androidheadlines.com In the latest developer preview of Android 12, it appears that Google has cleaned up the accessibility menu and made it a whole lot easier to navigate.

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What is assistive technology? The term "assistive technology" refers to devices or systems - hardware, software, and other services - that help maintain or improve a person's ability to do things in everyday life, such as communicate, learn, type, write, pick up things, move around, and many other things. In particular, assistive technology usually refers to such products and solutions that support or assist individuals with disabilities or the elderly population.

Factors such as the increasing number of orthopedic and neurological disorders in the general population, a growing demand for rehabilitation centers, and an increasing focus on compliance with regulatory standards have been fueling growth in the market for assistive technology. The World Health Organization (WHO) reveals that one billion people need assistive products today, and more than two billion people around the world are expected to need at least one assistive technology product by 2030. In 2019, sensory aids had a significant market share, and this trend is expected to continue over a forecast period that, according to statistics from MarketWatch.com , will see the global assistive technology market expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8%, with a value of US $8.39 billion from 2020 to 2023.

While assistive technology products are most often required by people with disabilities, older individuals, and people with chronic health conditions such as diabetes or dementia, anyone may need an assistive product of some kind, at some point in their life.

Given all of these considerations, it should come as no surprise that the term "assistive technology" now covers a broad spectrum of applications, including physical hardware, computer software, supporting infrastructure, and ancillary services. In this article, we'll be taking a look at the various aspects involved.

What Is Assistive Technology? AT Defined

(Image source: Georgia Department of Education )

In US federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-476) gave an initial definition of assistive technology and services, which was updated in 2004 by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (Public Law 108-446), which identifies assistive technology devices as:

"Any item, piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of children with disabilities. The term does not include a medical device that is surgically implanted or the replacement of such device."

Though specific to the educational sector , this definition does highlight the central task that assistive technology performs - increasing, maintaining, or improving the ability to function of any individual with a disability of some sort. In this sense, any tool which enables someone to manage or overcome a physical or mental disability may be considered an assistive technology. Or, in other words, assistive technology is the physical hardware, software, or services that help people manage their disabilities. Spectacles or contact lenses for corrective vision are the most widely used example.

Assistive Technology Device Categories

Assistive technology devices run the gamut from low-tech and inexpensive to high technology tools and services of great sophistication and complexity, which can cost thousands or even millions of dollars.

In the Assistive Technology Guidelines for Kentucky Schools , Kentucky Department of Education defines a set of devices available to address the functional capabilities of students with disabilities, as follows:

Academic and Learning Aids

These comprise a range of assistive technology solutions designed to address the needs of students in all academic areas, including reading, writing, spelling, math, study, and organization.

Aids for Daily Living

Self-help technologies for use in activities such as cooking, eating, home maintenance, mobility, bathing, and personal grooming.

Assistive Listening Devices and Environmental Aids

These are technologies that assist individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing with gaining access to information that's typically presented through an auditory medium.

Augmentative Communication

For individuals with limited speech or language, augmentative communication technology provides a vehicle for expressive and receptive communication with others in the environment.

Computer Access and Instruction

Some computer access technology offers alternative methods of input to the standard keyboard and mouse, while other implementations include software and hardware to modify the visual and sound output from a computer system.

Environmental Control

This class of assistive technology includes devices and mechanisms to help people with disabilities control electronic appliances (including doors, windows, and ventilation systems) within the school or home.

Mobility Aids

These include electronic and non-electronic aids, used to increase personal mobility.

Pre-vocational And Vocational Aids

For individuals in training for specific professions, or needing to work in these professions while managing some form of disability, these technologies include modifications of the tools and mechanisms needed for the completion of work-related tasks.

Recreation and Leisure Aids

These technologies help to increase the participation and independence of individuals with disabilities in recreation and leisure activities.

Seating and Positioning

This category of technology provides alternatives to the standard seating systems of public, institutional, or residential spaces.

Visual Aids

This class of assistive technology provides those coping with some form of disability with a means of accessing printed information and provides methods for producing written communication.

Assistive Technology Services

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990 also defines assistive technology services as "Any service that directly assists a child with a disability in the selection, acquisition, and use of an assistive technology device." Again, the definition has a specific focus on . But within this remit, there are a number of services that can provide the following functions for any individual needing to manage a disability:

Evaluating the needs of a person with a disability, including a functional evaluation of the individual in their customary environment.

Purchasing, leasing, or otherwise providing for the acquisition of assistive technology devices for people with disabilities.

Selecting, designing, fitting, customizing, adapting, applying, retaining, repairing, or replacing assistive technology devices.

Coordinating and implementing other therapies, interventions, or services with assistive technology devices, such as those associated with existing education or rehabilitation plans and programs.

Training or technical assistance for a person with a disability or, if appropriate, that individual's family.

Training or technical assistance for professionals (including individuals, institutions, or rehabilitation services), employers, or other individuals who provide services to employ, or are otherwise substantially involved in the major life functions of people with disabilities.

Assistive Technology Devices Examples

As we've seen, assistive technology can be classified into several distinct categories. Within each of them, a number of devices and services are available, ranging from analog or non-electronic products and tools to sophisticated digital or high-tech solutions. Here are some of the most widely recognized examples in each category:

Academic and Learning Aids include electronic and non-electronic devices to assist individuals in an educational setting. At the analog end of the spectrum, a pencil grip is an assistive technology device that allows students with a physical disability the necessary grasp and control over writing implements to enable easy written communication. Automatic page-turners and specially designed book holders are mechanical devices in this category. Calculators, spell checkers, and portable word processors are some of the electronic devices available. Software and digital computing solutions for word-processing, document reading, mathematics, other academic subjects, and task management are at the higher technology end of the spectrum.

Aids for Daily Living must compensate for any deficiencies that individuals have in performing everyday tasks due to physical or mental disabilities. For example, spectacles or contact lenses can aid in correcting defective vision. Specially adapted beds, riser reclining chairs, railings, bars, and door openers can assist individuals in getting around their homes and offices. Bathroom safety and assistive products such as commodes and shower chairs can aid in personal hygiene. And location or activity monitors can assist caregivers in managing the daily routines of their dependents or patients.

Assistive Listening Devices and Environmental Aids such as hearing aids, sound amplification devices, closed captioning systems, text telephones, and environmental alert mechanisms can help individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to navigate the events and features of their environment successfully. Key to this class of assistive technology devices is enabling individuals to amplify speech and other auditory signals, or use methods that can provide an alternative to standard auditory mechanisms.

Augmentative Communication technologies include object-based communication displays, picture books, pictorial communication boards, talking switches, voice output communication devices, and a range of digital computer-based communication devices. This class of assistive technology typically helps individuals with severe expressive communication impairments.

Computer Access and Instruction tools such as adaptive pointing devices, keyboard modifiers, and virtual keyboards provide users with an alternative to the standard methods of interacting with computers and other digital electronic equipment. People with mobility or sensory impairments who habitually use computers and mobile devices can also benefit from voice recognition software and devices , screen readers, and screen enlargement applications.

Environmental Control technologies typically manifest as multi-purpose mechanisms or devices, such as a switch or remote-control unit that governs a number of electronic appliances, such as doors, lighting, or TV and entertainment systems. There's often a degree of overlap between this category and the Aids for Daily Living - for example, in the case of specialized handles and grips, devices for extending an individual's physical reach, and lights on telephones and doorbells.

Mobility Aids include electronic and non-electronic variants of wheelchairs and scooters. Physical hardware such as canes, walkers, prosthetic devices, and crutches are included in this category. Other assistive technologies in this area include medical mobility aids and ambulatory devices like transfer lifts, Rollators, and motorized slings.

Pre-vocational and Vocational Aids are often job-specific and include technologies such as picture-based task analysis sheets, adapted knobs, timers, and watches. Both electronic and non-electronic devices are available, with low technology solutions that include specialized grips for handling various materials, and stabilization devices for supporting tools and work materials.

Recreation and Leisure assistive technology solutions include physical interventions such as ramps, grab bars, and wider doorways to enable access to buildings and exercise rooms, and flotation devices for swimming pools and baths. In the electronic and digital realm, examples include switch-adapted toys, environmental control access for televisions, videos, and audio entertainment systems, and game or book adaptations with augmented visual and audio cues.

Seating and Positioning technologies such as seat inserts for wheelchairs, prone standers, and adaptive chairs provide alternatives to the standard seating and resting options in private and public spaces.

Visual Aids encompass a wide range of electronic and non-electronic solutions that include braille writers for the visually impaired, talking dictionaries, adapted audio players/recorders, large print, and talking calculators, closed-circuit television (CCTV), and software for screen reading or text enlargement.

Social and Economic Implications

In its assessment of assistive technology , the World Health Organization (WHO) concludes that the various devices and services available enable and promote inclusion and participation, especially for individuals coping with disability, aging populations, and people with non-communicable diseases. Moreover, assistive technology allows people to live healthy, productive, independent, and dignified lives, and to actively participate in education, the labor market, and civic life.

As well as supporting independence and well-being, assistive technology products can also help in preventing or reducing the effects of secondary health conditions, such as lower limb amputation in people with diabetes. The products and services can also reduce the need for caregivers and reduce their workload while reducing or even eliminating the need for formal health and support services. As a result, access to appropriate assistive technology products can have a tremendous impact on community development and economic growth.

Assistive Technology Resources

AbleData provides free access for consumers, organizations, professionals, and caregivers within the United States to objective information on assistive technology and rehabilitation equipment available from a range of domestic and international sources. The AbleData database holds information on over 40,000 commercially produced and custom-made assistive devices. Requests for information may be submitted in person, by phone, standard mail, or email.

For people with impaired mobility or other disabilities, The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation has information about available assistive technology to help in driving motor vehicles.

PBS "Move to Include" provides examples of assistive devices for people who need assistance in producing or comprehending spoken or written language.

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders provides detailed information on Assistive Devices for People with Hearing, Voice, Speech, or Language Disorders.

The Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America website describe the various standards for different types of assistive technology.

Tech Finder is an online database of expert-approved apps and games for children with learning and attention difficulties.

The Tech Matrix website houses an online database of assistive and educational technology tools and resources that support learning for students with disabilities and their classmates.

Final Thoughts

While assistive technology products are often available for purchase off the shelf, some degree of fine-tuning or modification may be required to modify or customize a device to meet the individual needs of a person with a disability. When establishing what's required of the technology, occupational or physical therapists and caregivers should consider the commercially available solutions that may be used "as is" or ones that will have to be modified to meet the user's unique requirements. It may be necessary to custom build a device in specific cases.
Summary:
What is Assistive Technology?

The term "assistive technology" refers to devices or systems - hardware, software, and other services - that help maintain or improve a person's ability to do things in everyday life, such as communicate, learn, type, write, pick up things, move around, and many other things. In particular, assistive technology usually refers to such products and solutions that support or assist individuals with disabilities or the elderly population. Factors such as the increasing number of orthopedic and neurological disorders in the general population, a growing demand for rehabilitation centers, and an increasing focus on compliance with regulatory standards have been fueling growth in the market for assistive technology. The World Health Organization (WHO) reveals that one billion people need assistive products today, and more than two billion people around the world are expected to need at least one assistive technology product by 2030. Assistive technology categories: Academic and Learning Aids, Aids for Daily Living, Assistive Listening Devices and Environmental Aids, Augmentative Communication, Computer Access and Instruction, Environmental Control, Mobility Aids, Pre-vocational And Vocational Aids, Recreation and Leisure Aids, Seating and Positioning, Visual Aids, In its assessment of assistive technology, the World Health Organization (WHO) concludes that the various devices and services available enable and promote inclusion and participation, especially for individuals coping with disability, aging populations, and people with non-communicable diseases. Moreover, assistive technology allows people to live healthy, productive, independent, and dignified lives, and to actively participate in education, the labor market, and civic life.

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What Is Assistive Technology? - ITChronicles

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What is assistive technology? The term "assistive technology" refers to devices or systems - hardware, software, and other services - that help maintain or improve a person's ability to do things in everyday life, such as communicate, learn, type, write, pick up things, move around, and many other things.

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Disability Categories Broadly Defined by US IDEA

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Disability Categories Broadly Defined by US IDEA

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~by Understood.org

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At a glance

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires public schools to provide special education services to eligible students.

IDEA covers 13 disability categories.

Not every student who struggles in school qualifies.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires public schools to provide special education and related services to eligible students. But not every child who struggles in school qualifies. To be covered, a child's school performance must be "adversely affected" by a disability in one of the 13 categories below.

1. Specific learning disability (SLD)

The "specific learning disability" (SLD) category covers a specific group of learning challenges. These conditions affect a child's ability to read, write, listen, speak, reason, or do math. Here are some examples of what could fall into this category:

SLD is the most common category under IDEA. In the 2018-19 school year, around 33 percent of students who qualified did so under this category.

2. Other health impairment

The "other health impairment" category covers conditions that limit a child's strength, energy, or alertness. One example is ADHD, which impacts attention and executive function.

3. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

ASD is a developmental disability. It involves a wide range of symptoms, but it mainly affects a child's social and communication skills. It can also impact behavior.

Various mental health issues can fall under the "emotional disturbance" category. They may include anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression. (Some of these may also be covered under "other health impairment.")

5. Speech or language impairment

This category covers difficulties with speech or language. A common example is stuttering. Other examples are trouble pronouncing words or making sounds with the voice. It also covers language problems that make it hard for kids to understand words or express themselves.

6. Visual impairment, including blindness

A child who has eyesight problems is considered to have a visual impairment. This category includes both partial sight and blindness. If eyewear can correct a vision problem, then it doesn't qualify.

Kids with a diagnosis of deafness fall under this category. These are kids who can't hear most or all sounds, even with a hearing aid.

The term "hearing impairment" refers to a hearing loss not covered by the definition of deafness. This type of loss can change over time. Being hard of hearing is not the same thing as having trouble with auditory or language processing.

Kids with a diagnosis of deaf-blindness have both severe hearing and vision loss. Their communication and other needs are so unique that programs for just the deaf or blind can't meet them.

10. Orthopedic impairment

An orthopedic impairment is when kids lack function or ability in their bodies. An example is cerebral palsy.

11. Intellectual disability

Kids with this type of disability have below-average intellectual ability. They may also have poor communication, self-care, and social skills. Down syndrome is one example of a condition that involves an intellectual disability.

12. Traumatic brain injury

This is a brain injury caused by an accident or some kind of physical force.

13. Multiple disabilities

A child with multiple disabilities has more than one condition covered by IDEA. Having multiple issues creates educational needs that can't be met in a program designed for any one disability.

Having a disability is not enough to qualify for special education. The disability has to have an "adverse effect" on a child's education.

Key takeaways

Each of the 13 disability categories in IDEA can cover a range of difficulties.

Dyslexia, dyscalculia, and written expression disorder fall under the "specific learning disability" category.

"Other health impairment" can cover ADHD.

About the author

About the author

Andrew M.I. Lee, JD is an editor and attorney who strives to help people understand complex legal, education, and parenting issues.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Rayma Griffin, MA, MEd has spent 40 years working with children with learning and thinking differences in the classroom and as an administrator.

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See a list of the 13 IDEA disability categories. Find out which disabilities can qualify kids for special education.

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~Laura Caciolo

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Laura Caciolo, Newton, Pearson Merrill Prentice

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Assistive Technology in the Classroom - ppt download

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Kirk Behnke - Singapore Keynote (Part 2)

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Kirk Behnke - Singapore Keynote (Part 2)

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Cassie Frost - Tech for Executive Functioning Deficits

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Cassie Frost - Tech for Executive Functioning Deficits

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Executive Functioning-What you need to know to ensure student success
If your students struggle with time management, organization, attention and how generally to get themselves together to learn, they may have one or more executive functioning deficits. Learn about executive functioning and how you can support your students so you can get back to teaching!
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Tips and tricks for organizing your Google Drive and keeping it organized.

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Executive Functioning-What you need to know to ensure student success If your students struggle with time management, organization, attention and how generally to get themselves together to learn, they may have one or more executive functioning deficits. Learn about executive functioning and how you can support your students so you can get back to teaching!

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SpecialEdTech.net - Evaluating Students' AT Needs

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SpecialEdTech.net - Evaluating Students' AT Needs

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There's a common conception that assistive technology (AT), defined as "devices and services to help those with special needs", is only for the severely disabled. But there are many types of assistive technology, from a rubber pencil grip to the most sophisticated machine. In addition, in the United States, every student with an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) must have AT consideration.

Happily, a clearly defined process is laid out for considering if and what AT is needed, a free way to try out AT, and funding opportunities for acquiring AT.

When considering AT for a student, make it a team effort. Involve parents or guardians, teachers, ancillary staff (especially AT experts at the school), and others involved in the student's life. Then consider SETT (Student Environment Tasks Tools):

Student: What does the student need to do? What are the student's special needs? What are the student's current abilities?

Environment: What materials and equipment are currently available in the environment? What is the physical arrangement? Are there special concerns? What is the instructional arrangement? Are there likely to be changes? What supports are available to the student? What resources are available to the people supporting the student?

Tasks: What naturally occurring activities take place in the environment? What is everyone else doing? What activities support the student's curricular goals? How might the activities be modified to accommodate the student's special needs? How might technology support the student's active participation in those activities?

Tools: What no tech, low tech, and high tech options should be considered when developing a system for a student with these needs and abilities doing these tasks in these environments? What strategies might be used to invite increased student performance? How might these tools be tried out with the student in the customary environments in which they will be used?

It would be great if there was a form to gather information, and guess what? There is! You can download it from bit.ly/FonnerSETT. The form also includes spots for listing and assessing AT, and creating a plan for AT use.

It is highly likely that there is an assistive technology lending library set up to help you, particularly if you live in the United States. To find one, google "<your region> assistive technology lending library".
For example, in Michigan there is Alt-Shift which supports Michigan's K-12 schools with a wide variety of assistive technology that they will ship to Michigan schools for a free trial.

Understanding that AT assessment should be a thorough process, Alt+Shift lends equipment for 8 weeks but will extend the loan if requested. They allow students to take equipment home and are understanding if equipment gets broken. In general, the only time schools must replace the equipment is if it gets lost.

Anyone working at a Michigan school can create an account with Alt+Shift to start the lending process, and it is possible to borrow multiple items at once. If you know of an item that you want to try, but which Alt+Shift doesn't have, let them know and they will procure it for you to test.

There are also AT support sites in other states, such as the Maryland AT Network (MATN), Texas AT Network (TATN), Georgia Project for AT (GPAT), Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence (OCALI), and Wisconsin AT Initiative (WATI). There are many other sources as well, and a Google search on "assistive technology lending library" near you should yield helpful results.

Your school or district should have money budgeted for AT, but if this runs short there are other sources. See the AT Resources Funding Guide published by the Assistive Technology Industry Association ( atia.org) and the Grants page on Westminster Technologies site ( westminstertech.com).

In addition to the sites listed above, most websites for ISDs (Intermediate School Districts) or RESAs (Regional Educational Service Agencies have links to AT resources.

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Does my student need assistive technology (AT)? How to assess, and try AT for free - Special ed tech tips

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There's a common conception that assistive technology (AT), defined as "devices and services to help those with special needs", is only for the severely disabled. But there are many types of assistive technology, from a rubber pencil grip to the most sophisticated machine. In addition, in the United States, every student with an IEP (Individualized ...

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VIdeo Tutorials

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Keller Fonner - Ed Tech Supports for Struggles with Literacy

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Keller Fonner - Ed Tech Supports for Struggles with Literacy

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Kelly is a self-employed consultant and trainer in assistive and educational technology. Since 1986, she has presented to schools, universities & families in 48 US states & internationally in Australia, Canada and South Africa. She presents on a wide range of topics including technology integration, augmentative communication, computer access, literacy, electronic writing, organizers,assistive technology assessment and implementation strategies. Kelly has a B.S. in special education from Millersville University, an M.S. in educational technology with a minor in special education/rehabilitation technology from The Johns Hopkins University, and holds an Assistive Technology Applications Certificate of Learning from CA State University - Northridge. She has pursued additional study in adult and urban education at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.

Kelly has been working with individuals with disabilities since the mid 70s and with assistive technologies since 1983. Her teaching experiences have been as a teacher assistant, teacher, instructional media specialist, and assistive technology consultant in early childhood, preschool and school age programs. She worked 8 years as a consultant with PennTech, the statewide technology project supported by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Since 1999, Kelly has maintained an independent business with contract work in educational and assistive technology consultation and training with schools, families, agencies, and companies.

Kelly has consulted to university and adult programs concerning access to technology by college students and employees with disabilities. She has taught courses at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in both the Occupational Therapy and Exceptional Education departments and at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She was a part of the development and training team for the ATACP, CSUN, California State University - Northridge's Center on Disabilities. Kelly is on the training support team for several manufacturers in the assistive technology industry and has done consulting on several development projects. In addition to her professional affiliation with people with complex communication needs, Kelly has people in her personal life that use and have used assistive technologies, including augmentative communication, and this has molded and shaped her career and presentations over time. She firmly believes that information about this field is at its greatest value when represented from all perspectives.

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Leigh-Anne Tompkins, Graphics Afoot Studio Design

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Kelly is a self-employed consultant and trainer in assistive and educational technology. Since 1986, she has presented to schools, universities & families in 48 US states & internationally in Australia, Canada and South Africa. She presents on a wide range of topics including technology integration, augmentative communication, computer access, literacy, electronic writing, organizers,assistive technology assessment and implementation strategies.

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~by Advancement Courses

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More than 7 million children with disabilities received special education services across the United States in 2014, and this number continues to grow. As technology advances so does the ability to create better assistive technology to increase engagement and inclusion for our students with learning disabilities in the general education setting.

Positive Outcomes Academically and Socially

Before iPads, Smartboards and Chromebooks, students with disabilities were trapped to their assistive devices that kept them isolated from their peers and not included in the academic instruction. A special educator would gather his or her students with assistive technology (AT) needs and march them out of the classroom to an alternative setting. There, they could work independently on the same task as their peers without the collaboration and engagement option. Often, the task would be altered to fit the technology and not the students' academic abilities.

The students become more reliant to the device and grow to be independent learners rather than collaborative and active members of the classroom. Yes, supports are great and so are programs, but we can't forget the most important role of AT for our struggling learners. It is to create independence while allowing a student to access the learning at the same level as their peers We no longer need to exclude our students with AT needs; we can incorporate the technology in our learning communities.

AT refers to the devices and services that are used to increase, maintain or improve the capabilities of a student with a disability. Tracy Gray, director of PowerUp What Works, the National Center for Technology Innovation and the Center for Implementing Technology in Education explained in EdTech, "Students now have access to assistive capabilities on technologies that are smaller, more mobile, more integrated and inexpensive. They're mainstream, too, so that makes them cool. All students want to use them." With the access to AT, students can demonstrate their skills while feeling included in the classroom activities and discussions.

As educators, we know how important it is to keep a student's integrity while supporting the challenges they face every day with the academic rigor and pace of the general education setting. Programs that read audio books to our struggling readers, for example, allow them to listen to the story while others are reading, so they have the same access to the information without a student's decoding and fluency skills to hinder them from comprehending the story or novel.

Lizzy, a student who needs AT for both her writing and fine motor skills, can actively participate in her social studies class because her teacher provided the technology as part of the classroom routine. Every day, the teacher projects her civic question on the Smartboard while one member from each table writes the question down. Lizzy takes a snapshot of the question and becomes the secretary of her group using both her word prediction and speech-to-text applications. Her group, just like the other students, then send their responses to be displayed on the Smartboard. This is a great way for Lizzie to be engaged and a valuable member of her social studies group. She can build confidence and grow as a learner.

Universal Design a key component when planning activities and lesson that incorporate AT needs. That is why it is valuable to have all the stakeholders in the planning process, working closely with both the district AT and Learning Behavior Specialist to plan and evaluate the best AT resources for the lesson or activity.

Benefits of technologies include the following:

Increased independence

Personalized learning

Engagement with peers

Reduced anxiety

Confidence building

Improved academic skills

Assistive Technology Resources and Ideas

Reading, Writing and Dyslexia

The following tools can help you with students struggling with reading comprehension or with students falling behind in writing.

OneNote software aims to help students with dyslexia.

Immersive reader is afree tool by Microsoft that supports students in reading and writing deficits.

Spell Better app is a free iPad app (upgrade for $9.99) that provides word prediction capabilities with read-back and text-to-speech capabilities. The upgrade provides export options and additional notes.

Text-to-speech lets kids see text and hear it read aloud at the same time.

Audiobooks and digital text-to-speech books allow kids to hear books read aloud.

Optical character recognition (OCR) reads aloud text from images and pictures.

Graphic organizers are visual representations, like diagrams and mind maps, of ideas and concepts. Kids can use graphic organizers to take notes while reading, which can help with comprehension. Graphic organizers can be digital or pen and paper.

Annotation tools let kids take notes and write comments while reading. This can make it easier to retain information. Annotation tools can be found on certain software or apps, or they can be traditional pens, markers and sticky notes.

Dictionaries and thesauri allow kids to look up words they don't understand when reading. A picture dictionary is a popular tool that uses images to define words, and a talking dictionary reads definitions aloud.

Math

The following tools can help you with students struggling with math skills.

Calculators that are downloadable or large key calculator for students with fine motor difficulties.

Math notation tools for writing out equations by hand, which can be challenging for kids who have trouble writing numbers and symbols.

Graph paper has a grid to make it easier for kids to line up numbers and symbols in math problems.

Graphing and drawing tools are typically digital tools that help kids graph the path of an equation and draw shapes.

Equation-solving tools are digital tools that help kids work with equations. Unlike calculators, equation-solving tools don't solve a problem.

Manipulatives are objects that help kids solve math problems in alternative ways. Manipulatives can be physical objects or virtual objects on computers.

Graphic organizers help kids break down and lay out the steps for solving math problems. Graphic organizers can be digital or pen and paper.

Learn About Assistive Technology in the Classroom

Interested in learning more? Advancement Courses offers K-12 educators over 200 online, self-paced professional development courses covering both foundational topics and emerging trends. Here are a few that can help you move from surviving to thriving:

Using Technology to Support Students with Special Needs: Develop strategies for incorporating assistive technologies to help all students access curriculum, how to use technology to differentiate instruction and motivate students with disabilities. In addition, you'll explore methods for choosing the right technology-based tools for your classroom and for finding funding to help ensure that your students with special needs get the resources they require.

The Role of Technology in the Inclusive Classroom: Using Universal Design for Learning principles, you'll learn how to plan instruction that will motivate a wide variety of learners, and how to stay organized and efficient while managing a scaffolded, individualized curriculum. In addition, you'll explore digital tools (including assistive technology) that you can use to present core content so that all students can access the curriculum according to their specific needs.

Supporting Students with Learning Disabilities in the Inclusive Classroom: Cultivate resources designed to maximize learning for students who have learning disabilities. You'll develop concrete strategies for creating flexible assignments that allow for choice and meet a variety of needs, and for creating a positive classroom culture that encourages students' academic success and desire to learn.

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How Assistive Technology Supports Special Education Students | AC

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More than 7 million children with disabilities received special education services across the United States in 2014, and this number continues to grow. As technology advances so does the ability to create better assistive technology to increase engagement and inclusion for our students with learning disabilities in the general education setting.

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Light-hearted reading on what UDL means for traditional academic structures

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Light-hearted reading on what UDL means for traditional academic structures

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Introduction

Disabled students are inconvenient.
How varies by disability....
Autistic? Depressed? OCD?
They don't want to deal with that.
So it just doesn't exist.
We don't have those problems here.
They do, of course, but they pretend it's not there.
With no obvious difference, nothing you can see that says there is something different, they can pretend.
They can pretend that we are making things up.
They can pretend that we are just being difficult.
They can pretend that we are simply lazy.
They can pretend that our inconvenient behaviors are there for any reason at all.
So it is for a reason which makes it purely our fault.
So it is for a reason that does not require accommodation or education, but shame and punishment.
It exists, but they can pretend it doesn't.
And then we pretend it doesn't exist either, not wanting to face what they dish out when we try to make them see what is in front of their eyes.
Disability becomes an inconvenient part of ourselves that we would simply rather ignore, and then they have won. I refuse.
I will be inconvenient, and they will just have to deal with it. 1
-Alyssa Hillary

What would happen if our society fully recognized and validated human variation? What if we cultivated rather than reduced this rich distinctiveness? How would the public landscape change if the widest possible diversity of human forms, functions and behaviors were fully accommodated? How would such an understanding alter our collective sense of what is beautiful and proper? What would be the political significance of such inclusion? 2 -Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Zoey is a bright, precocious, funny, quirky ten-year-old girl who loves Lalaloopsy dolls, Taylor Swift, cookie dough ice cream, chess, and the color pink. By the time she was seven, Zoey had been diagnosed with a variety of neurodiversities. 3 Yet, she did not fully understand the implications of disability until she had been expelled from three private schools that proved for a variety of reasons unable to accommodate her neurological diversities, sensory processing needs, and behavioral challenges. In the fall of 2013, Zoey's parents enrolled her in their neighborhood public school on the assumption that, by law, the school would provide a range of services and programs to help her succeed socially and academically. They were thus unprepared for the school's determination to keep Zoey in a regular classroom without any supports until the conclusion of a lengthy evaluation process despite the recommendations of their private therapists and doctors; these professionals had already evaluated and diagnosed Zoey and had been offering her therapeutic services since she was four years old.

By the sixth week of the semester while the evaluation continued, Zoey was experiencing crisis in a classroom and school environment that had failed on every level to accommodate her. Her frustration and anxiety led to frequent, violent outbursts, which resulted in social rejection from her peers and abandonment of all attempts at education from her teacher, who simply allowed Zoey to wander about the classroom while the other students participated in collaborative learning. Left largely unsupervised, Zoey often slipped out of the classroom undetected and roamed the school hallways until someone eventually noticed that she was missing. During one such excursion, she decided to hide in one of the empty classrooms to see how long it would take someone to find her. No one in her classroom, including her teacher, was aware of her absence until an hour later, when the principal was alerted. After several minutes of searching produced no result, the school called to tell Zoey's mother that they could not locate her. Alarmed, she raced to the school and walked up and down the hallways calling for Zoey, who, on hearing her mother's voice, emerged laughing from her hiding place, delighted by her trickery and completely oblivious to the chaos and panic she had caused.

Zoey's parents grew increasingly concerned as they realized how little training and experience the principal and most staff members had in working with and responding to students with disabilities. When the school continued to insist that Zoey remain in the regular classroom without any supports, they began to suspect that the school's determination to pursue inclusion was less about Zoey's needs and more about a lack of funds. Their suspicions were confirmed during a routine meeting with school administrators when the principal explicitly acknowledged that Zoey's ability to succeed in a regular classroom depended on the assistance of a full-time, one-on-one, highly trained paraprofessional but that the school district did not have the funds to provide one. When Zoey's parents asked what they could do to persuade the district to provide a classroom aide, the principal shrugged and suggested that they join a parents' advocacy group. It was during this same meeting that the principal felt the need to tell them that she had been fielding calls from other parents, who were concerned that their children no longer enjoyed attending school because "Zoey was ruining all of their fun."

Following a disturbing incident in which Zoey's mother witnessed a teacher responding to Zoey's verbal and physical aggression by wrestling her to the floor and pinning her down by the arms and legs, the principal managed to produce a classroom aide who lacked any formal training or experience and was not assigned to Zoey individually but was required to float from classroom to classroom as needed. This meant that Zoey would largely remain on her own in a regular classroom with one well-meaning but completely flummoxed teacher and twenty-five terrified students with no supports or accommodations (save a scheduled, once-a-day trip to the resource room at a time that was convenient not for Zoey but for the overworked school counselor). On her second day on the job, the aide-who had not been properly apprised of Zoey's particular needs and challenges-allowed Zoey to visit the restroom on her own, something that she was never permitted to do given her habit of slipping out of her classroom and wandering the hallways. Taking full advantage of her sudden freedom, Zoey decided that she would try to find her way home and made it all the way to the lobby and nearly out the front door to the parking lot before being stopped by her mother, who happened to be in the lobby that morning waiting for a meeting with the principal.

Determined never to return Zoey to that school environment, Zoey's parents began home schooling her until they managed-after a lengthy and costly battle-to have her transferred to the only elementary school in their district that provided a full-time, self-contained special education program run by a team of highly trained staff. When Zoey started the program, she attended school for only a few hours a day, regularly reacted violently to her classmates and teaching staff, cared little about her appearance or personal hygiene, and made few if any attempts to socialize with her peers. Now, nearly three years later, Zoey is thriving. She is earning excellent grades, participating in after-school activities like honor choir and art lessons, learning to manage better her anxiety and emotions, and even making friends.

Zoey's story is all too familiar to students with disabilities and their caregivers. As Zoey's mother, it is intimately and painfully familiar to me.

When I shared this story during a roundtable discussion at an academic conference a few months ago, I was dismayed when the general consensus among the scholars present seemed to be that "inclusion is not always the best answer for students with disabilities." I am not sure that this was the moral of my story. Too often, inclusive education is narrowly understood as the education of children with disabilities in "regular" classrooms. 4 Zoey was educated in the regular classroom, but it was far from inclusive; in her situation, inclusive education meant the mere presence of a child with a disability without any real supports, no individualized attention to her particular needs, little or no training of staff, and utter failure to teach students about the nature of disabilities or how to interact with peers who have a disability. In no way, shape, or form was this inclusive education. Moreover, the statement that "inclusive education is not always the best answer for children with disabilities" suggests that inclusive education is only about the education of students with disabilities and that the "failure" of inclusion is the responsibility of the child, not the inadequacies of the education provided. Scholars in the field of Disability Studies in Education (DSE) 5 have challenged such views by arguing that inclusive education is about the education of all students; is concerned with identifying and removing all barriers to learning; and is committed to investigating and changing cultural practices of schooling that marginalize and exclude not only on the basis of disability but also on the basis of race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and religion. 6 "Taken together," write Susan Baglieri, et al., "these departures of the DSE discourse on inclusive education from the dominant special education discourse around inclusive education are radical." 7

Unpacking Inclusive Education

Many proponents of inclusion argue that all children are entitled to equal participation in every aspect of the educational experience, and that all students benefit from interacting with children with a range of abilities and differences. In particular, parents want their children to form friendships with their peers and to participate in all of the typical social activities of childhood. 12 Other supporters of inclusion stress the harmful impact of educating children with disabilities in separate, special education classrooms, a setting that they claim is inferior to the regular classroom environment for the following reasons: limited, less rigorous curriculum; lower expectations that can lead to diminished academic and post-secondary opportunities; less access to nondisabled peers; and social stigma. 13 A 2012 study from the Association of Black Psychologists, for example, claims that for students in separate special education programs, "the long term, detrimental effects of labeling, stigmatization, lowered expectations, inadequate instruction, limited access to enrichment opportunities, and special segregation can be debilitating." 14 In an article published in the Trotter Review, scholars at Yale University argue that, "special education classes often become the 'dumping ground' for so-called problem students, instead of the supportive and nurturing environment required for students who have a genuine need for these services." 15

Inclusion without resources, without support, without teacher preparation time, without commitment, without a vision statement, without restructuring, without staff development, won't work.... There are children who are dumped into classrooms in the name of inclusion, when in fact, nothing is in place to make that an inclusive classroom except that they've put a child with significant disabilities into it. That's not a problem about inclusion; it's irresponsible planning, irresponsible fiscal management, irresponsible teaching. But to call that inclusion is a real mistake. 20

The most ubiquitous aspect of the inclusion debates emphasizes the impact of inclusion on so-called "able-bodied" or neurotypical children. Inclusion's supporters argue that the acceptance and understanding of one another as diverse individuals with differing abilities is one of the primary goals of education. "Inclusion is consistent with multicultural educations, and [with] a world in which many more people have opportunities to know, play, and work with one another," writes Sapon-Shevin. 23 Critics of inclusion, by contrast, tend to stress the negative impact of inclusion on "regular" education students. In a briefing before the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 2007, for example, Abigail Thernstrom stated:

Antisocial acts have become expressions of an illness.... My concern here is with the regular students eager and ready to learn in a classroom in which just a handful of kids can make schooling extremely difficult.... If schools try to go to bat for the regular students whose education is disrupted by troublemakers, they risk, at best, endless hours compiling a proper paper trail, and, at worst, defeat in the courtroom many years down the road, with huge legal bills on their hands. And yet, the education of students who are ready to learn must be severely compromised when one of their peers repeatedly screams at a teacher, while another rolls around on the floor and eats paper clips and staples. 24

Using language less explicitly disparaging of children with disabilities but no less ableist in meaning and implication, a study on inclusion published in the Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals (JAASEP) asked:

Do we favor the few so sensitively that we are unwilling to be concerned about the Regular Ed Students whose classrooms are being adapted to meet the needs of others? Are we truly committed to the educational experience of all students, and if so are we as educators willing to ask the frightening questions regarding the impact of Inclusion on all students? If as much as $60 billion a year is spent on the 12 percent of Students with Disabilities, do we not have an obligation to document whether that lopsided expenditure represents any benefit to Regular Ed Students? 25

This JAASEP study reflects the widespread assumption that the so-called regular classroom is rightly the province of nondisabled students and a neutral, value-free space that students with disabilities invade and disrupt via their very presence and their costly needs for adaptation. What this view fails to recognize is that this space, far from neutral, is constructed for a mythical, "able-bodied," neurotypical norm that neither reflects nor accommodates the wide range of diverse learners within it, regardless of whether these learners have been diagnosed with a disability. 26

Inclusive education, then, rarely means the full and equal participation of all students within a democratic learning environment that recognizes and accommodates multiple human diversities. Instead, inclusive education pivots around a mythical, unexamined norm against which students are measured and often labeled, marginalized, and pathologized. "Consequently" write David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder, and Linda Ware, "there is no inclusionism that does not come replete with a strategy of making estranged bodies better fit normative expectations." 27

Race, Gender, and Disproportionality

As many scholars have pointed out, the American public school system also makes far-reaching assumptions about racial, cultural, and gender norms that mark black bodies as deviant, that marginalize or exclude cultural and ethnic differences, and that use male-centric models and criteria for diagnoses and educational placement. 28 Such assumptions have led to tremendous racial, cultural, and gender disproportionality in "judgmental" disability categories (i.e., categories that depend on professional interpretation) and special education programs and services. 29 For example, although African Americans represent only seventeen percent of elementary and secondary students in the United States, they constitute twenty-one percent of total enrollments in special education. Black, male children comprise eighty percent of all school children labeled Emotionally Disturbed and thirty-five percent categorized as Learning Disabled. 30 Similarly, Latino students represent just over twenty percent of the school population but almost twenty-four percent of students classified with learning disabilities. American Indian/Alaska Native children are one and one-half times more likely than white students to receive services for specific learning disabilities. Of all students who currently receive special services, fifty-four percent come from a variety of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds, and many have limited English-language proficiency. 31 And minority students-particularly black boys-who are assigned to disability categories are more likely than their white counterparts to be disciplined, suspended, expelled, and placed into more restrictive educational settings. 32

Reasons for the disproportionate representation of minority and CLD students in special education are numerous and varied but include cultural differences in language expression and communication styles; less opportunity for early exposure to school-related academic or curricular experiences; preferred learning styles, e.g., learning primarily through listening or through physically interacting with learning materials; parents' inability (due to lack of time, resources, ability to communicate in English with school personnel, etc.) to challenge the results of evaluations or the placement recommendations of school districts; stereotypic or lower expectations of teachers or family; and lack of culturally responsive eligibility criteria, assessments, and curricular materials that accommodate students with diverse backgrounds and learning needs. 33 Investigating the issue of racial disproportionality in special education, a report published by the United States Commission on Civil Rights outlined the following concerns:

Teachers referring minority students for special education testing, but not referring similarly situated white students.

Evaluators using different types of tests, more testing, or different interpretations of test results to determine that minority students need special education services.

Schools placing minority special education students in self-contained classrooms, while similarly situated white students are placed in regular classrooms.

Delays in evaluating and placing students that affect children of all races and national origins.34

Questions of disproportionality in special education have concentrated almost entirely on race and, in particular, on the over-representation of African-American males. Yet, figures from the Department of Education demonstrate a significant disproportionality along gender lines. Approximately two-thirds of students receiving special education services under IDEA are boys, who constitute seventy-five percent of students assigned to Emotionally Disturbed and Learning Disability categories. 38 Since 2004, with amendments to IDEA, states are required to collect, evaluate, and report rates of disproportionality in special education, but only for racial disproportionality. States use various methods, and no single way to measure disproportionality exists. In fact, each state is allowed to decide what level of disproportionality is significant. 39 And states are not required to report rates of gender disproportionality. 40 Clearly, then, gender disparity in special education has not received the attention from states and the federal government that it seems to merit. And while scholars are increasingly paying attention to gender gaps in special education, most, according to Emily Arms, Jill Bickett, and Victoria Graf, tend to ask why boys are overrepresented in special education categories and programs rather than to question whether girls are underrepresented. 41

The underrepresentation of girls in special education is related to the underrepresentation of girls in certain disability categories like autism. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is four and a half times more common among boys than girls. One in forty-two boys in the United States has been diagnosed with autism, while the ratio for girls is one in 189. 42 Yet, a number of recent studies suggest that the gender gap in autism diagnoses is less the result of biology and more the product of androcentric research methods and diagnostic criteria. 43 Unlike many boys with ASD, girls with ASD seem more able to develop strategies to compensate for autism-associated traits (such as difficulty recognizing emotion) and less often exhibit the kind of behavioral problems associated with autism. 44 "Findings from the analysis of boys and girls separately," writes Radha Kothari, "may provide support for the theory that girls adapt better than boys to the impairments associated with ASD, making it less likely that behavioral characteristics in girls will reach the severity required to meet criteria for a clinical diagnosis." 45 In other words, because of social conditioning, autism often presents differently in girls than it does in boys. However, because researchers assume that autism is far more common in boys, they are much more likely to conduct their research using male, as opposed to female, subjects; consequently, their understanding of ASD is based on how it presents in boys, who are in turn much more likely to be diagnosed. 46

The androcentrism that contributes to the underrepresentation of girls in autism diagnoses contributes as well to gender imbalances in special education. Across all ethnic and racial groups, twice as many boys as girls are identified as needing special education services in primary and secondary schools. 47 Research has shown that boys who are frustrated academically tend to act out negatively in class, while girls tend to internalize their frustrations and work harder to please. 48 In addition, boys are more likely to express emotions in verbal outbursts, while girls who are experiencing depression or other emotional issues tend to keep silent. Because boys are more likely than girls to exhibit problematic behavioral characteristics associated with certain disabilities, therefore, they are more often referred to special education programs. Furthermore, girls are usually referred for special education services due to emotional disabilities only after they demonstrate behaviors typically associated with boys who already receive such services. 49 Equally troubling, boys are more likely to be classified as intellectually disabled, learning disabled, and emotionally disturbed because the threshold for achievement is higher for boys than for girls; hence, characteristics and behaviors marked as disabilities in male students are simply considered "normal" for female students. 50 Hence, these findings suggest that girls are underrepresented in disability categories and special education programs and that such underrepresentation can be explained at least in part by gender biases in assessment instruments and diagnostic criteria. 51 The consequences of such underrepresentation are potentially dramatic. Because girls have to exhibit more severe challenges in order to receive the same education supports as their male counterparts, they are likely to be diagnosed later (if at all) and hence have to wait longer to benefit from needed services. 52 They are also more likely to drop out of school, become pregnant as teenagers, and experience unemployment and poverty throughout their lives. 53

If white, male, middle-class cultural norms are the standard by which students' abilities and behaviors are measured and if assessments and educational materials incorporate and reflect these norms, then we begin to understand disabilities, "problem" behaviors, learning "deficits," and poor student academic performance in a very different light. Hence, we need to analyze further how the culture and organization of schools constrain the achievement, overlook the needs, and pathologize the minds and bodies of students who deviate from these norms.

Reconceptualizing Disability and Inclusive Education Through Universal Design for Learning

The dominant conceptualization of inclusive education in the United States is the education of children with disabilities in regular classroom settings with supports and accommodations. 54 Such a narrow view of inclusive education-as reflected in the Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals study cited earlier-fails to acknowledge that "Regular Ed Students" might also benefit from the supports and accommodations designed to assist students with disabilities. In fact, by making a distinction between the "Regular Ed Students" and "others," the JAASEP study adheres to what Rosemarie Garland-Thomson calls the ability/disability system that creates rigid but false distinctions between bodies and minds perceived as "able" (the norm) and bodies and minds perceived as "disabled" (any and all deviations from the "norm"). Our built environment, policies, and attitudes make little room for human variation. Instead, they are modeled on, and thus privilege, bodies and minds perceived as fit, competent, and intelligent and thus devalue, stigmatize, and subjugate bodies and minds viewed as ugly, deformed, and incompetent. When individuals "fail" to think, move, act, and look in ways that fit expected norms, they are rendered "disabled." Although this binary understanding of bodies is ideological rather than biological, Garland-Thomson notes, it nevertheless produces material results and magnifies the precarity of disabled individuals by "legitimating an unequal distribution of resources, status, and power within a biased social and architectural environment." 55

Disability scholars challenge such hegemonic discourses by reimagining disability as a wide-ranging continuum that encompasses all minds and bodies and a product of history and culture. "Disability," writes Garland-Thomson, "is not a natural state of corporeal inferiority, inadequacy, excess, or a stroke of misfortune. Rather, disability is a culturally fabricated narrative of the body, similar to what we understand as the fictions of race and gender." 56 This social model of disability stands in stark contrast to the medical model that understands disability as an individual problem, affliction, or disease needing cure or a limitation to be overcome through hard work, pluck, and a great attitude. Criticizing this view of disability, the late activist and comedian Stella Young remarked:

And that quote, The only disability in life is a bad attitude, ... it's just not true.... You know, no amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. Smiling at a television screen isn't going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into Braille. It's just not going to happen. 57

While acknowledging that certain impairments, including some neurological conditions and disorders that cause chronic pain, pose real difficulties, the social model of disability stresses that people are "disabled" primarily by environments, policies, and attitudes that fail to accommodate and include the vast array of human particularities. Hence, disability is not an individual problem but a human variation that needs to be accommodated through improvements in social, ideological, and economic structures. Many proponents of the social model of disability also recognize that the actual lived experiences of individuals with disabilities are multidimensional and shape the ways in which the environment is experienced. Hence, they stress the variability of the lived experiences of disabilities and their interaction with other identities such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation, age, and a host of other factors within varied environmental contexts. 58

The social model of disability emphasizes the dependency of all individuals on external supports to survive and flourish. In an appearance on "The Colbert Report," Aimee Mullins, a Paralympian and disability activist, made this point explicitly in response to host Stephen Colbert's amazement that she had managed to walk competently onto the set on two prosthetic legs:

Colbert: "That completely changes my image of what it means to not have a leg. Cause I've got to tell you, that looks a lot like a leg to me and you just walked out here completely confident and completely poised. What has happened to prostheses in the last few years that I don't know about evidently?"
Mullins: "Well, you do know. You put on prosthetics every day. You have them on your face."
Colbert: "You mean the latex chin they put on me every- ... You mean my glasses?"
Mullins: "It's glasses, yeah of course. Anything that functions as part of your body that you wear outside of your body is really a prosthetic, whether it's clothes, your cell phone, scissors, your glasses. So, the fact that so many new technologies right now are really allowing people to rebuild bodies and push past the limits that nature would impose on them, it's completely redefining what we think of as ability and disability." 59

As Mullins noted, all bodies depend on an array of prosthetics and supports to increase functioning and to reduce pain and limitations. But we tend only to think of such supports in terms of dependency and "special" forms of accommodation when people with disabilities use them. Stephen Colbert needs glasses in order to see clearly. Aimee Mullins needs prosthetic legs to walk. Stephen Colbert is not a medal-winning athlete. Aimee Mullins has set world records in sprinting and long jump. Yet, curiously, he is not regarded as disabled and she is.

Applied to education, the social model of disability refuses to mark as aberrant particular students' bodies and minds but instead recognizes the variability of all students and the need to modify, adapt, and manipulate the classroom environment, curriculum, and pedagogy to accommodate this variability. The concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is the best example of the application of the social model of disability to educational approaches. Universal design involves designing products, buildings, or environments so that they can be used readily by the widest possible range of individuals. Although well established in architecture and other domains, universal design is relatively new to elementary and secondary education and even newer to higher education. 63 Based on neuroscientific evidence that individuals with varied backgrounds, abilities, and motivations have different learning needs, Universal Design for Learning means the creation and implementation of teaching methods and materials that reduce barriers in the learning environment and that allow learning goals to be achievable by all students.

Unlike traditional pedagogical approaches that expect diverse students to adapt to typically inflexible curricula, UDL adapts the curricula to increase access for everyone. Unlike traditional approaches that locate obstacles faced by students with disabilities, UDL understands that such obstacles are often the same obstacles encountered by students with different learning styles, backgrounds, and languages. Unlike traditional approaches that see accommodations and adaptive technologies as useful and appropriate only for students with disabilities, UDL recognizes the value and necessity of "cognitive prostheses" for enhancing the academic performance of all students. 64 Fundamentally, UDL acknowledges the unfairness of using one teaching approach, one form of assessment, or one type of curriculum that tends to privilege one type of learner. As a quotation attributed to Einstein cautions, "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

My Applications of UDL in the College Classroom

My journey with Zoey through the murky and frustrating terrain of inclusive education has generated my outrage over how little our educational institutions, for whatever reason, truly fail to accommodate the needs of diverse learners. But it has also forced me to recognize the limits of my own teaching approaches. I had long prided myself as a disability advocate and ally, fully committed to working with individual students to ensure that they are able to access the course content. But it had never occurred to me that my view of accommodations was fundamentally flawed. It assumed that accommodations were something from which only students with disabilities benefitted. It offered accommodations on an individual, case-by-case basis. It was always an addition to existing curricular approaches, not something built into the curriculum from the start. Worst of all, my teaching methods, materials, requirements, and assessments made numerous ableist assumptions about my students' capacities to see, hear, speak, move, read, write, understand English, attend, organize, engage, and remember.

The more I studied the benefits of Universal Design for Learning and how its appropriate application potentially erases disability as traditionally conceived, I began to see the tremendous possibilities of applying UDL to my own courses. My thinking about disability and accommodations had been transformed but I still needed to overhaul significantly my teaching materials and pedagogical approaches. As a professor of gender studies, I have for some time now recognized the effectiveness of exploring gender, race, disability and other concepts through the lens of popular culture. My course on the history and culture of vampires, for example, taps into current student interest in all things vampiric-generated in large part by the hugely popular Twilight series-and explores how changes over time in cultural perceptions and representations of vampires reflect shifting gender, race, class, and sexual norms and anxieties. Students who otherwise would not consider taking a class with the word "gender" in the title have proven very eager to take a course on vampires. As I grew to understand the concept of Universal Design for Learning, I recognized that such an approach is compatible in many ways with UDL goals to present curricular materials in ways that are familiar and engaging to students. And so, I launched my initial foray into UDL in the Fall of 2014, when I taught a class on the wildly popular Harry Potter book series-a highly familiar touchstone that perhaps more than any other aspect of popular culture captivated the imagination and influenced the coming-of-age experiences of the current generation of college students. But it would not be enough to teach a course on a theme both comfortable and familiar to my students. To truly achieve universal design for learning, I would need to implement the core UDL principles outlined by the National Center on Universal Design for Learning that call for providing 1) multiple methods of representation of course content, 2) multiple means for students to express what they know, 3) and multiple methods for motivating students to learn. 65

Multiple methods of representation:

Students differ in the ways that they perceive and comprehend information, and all students face disability when information is presented to them in ways that they find difficult or impossible to access. 66 Following the social model of disability, such inaccessibility is the root of the problem, not the "condition" of the student. Much like a wheelchair user is disabled by the lack of ramps on buildings, a deaf student, for example, is disabled through lack of interpreters or the availability of closed captioning. Visual learners are disabled when they are offered text-exclusive formats. And students who have nominal experiences in the dominant language, cognitive strategies, and culture of the "average" classroom are disabled when information is presented in a manner that assumes a common background among all students.

Particularly at the high school and postsecondary levels, presentation often consists of text-bound information-notes on the board, worksheets, and textbooks-and teacher-centric instruction-lecture and demonstration. The goal of UDL is not to eliminate these methods but to provide additional methods and materials for diverse learners to acquire the same information and knowledge. Additionally, by providing multiple means of representation, educators are better able to construct bridges between students' culturally influenced thinking systems and those that are unfamiliar to them. 67 These forms of representation might include formats such as film, music, or web sites but also digital texts that allow for adjustability of display, integrated highlighting, electronic note taking, audio narration, embedded prompts, linked glossaries, and background information. Additionally, providing other course materials-including syllabi, Power Point lectures, discussion questions, lecture notes, assignment guidelines, review sheets, and course calendars-in digital formats allows students to use adaptive technologies, such as text readers and closed captioning, and gives all students greater access to course materials by allowing them to navigate course content at their own speed and on their own terms. Freedom from the strictures of print, then, allows students to construct meaning actively via customization of and interactivity with the text itself. 68

To ensure multiple means of representation in my Harry Potter course, I offered course materials-e.g., syllabus, Power Point lectures, discussion questions, study guides-in digital formats that allowed students to change font style and size, adjust volume and speed controls, and to enhance text and images through closed captioning or voice narration. Within Power Point presentations and lecture notes, I embedded support for vocabulary, unfamiliar references, jargon, colloquialisms, and symbols within the text using hyperlinks to multilingual glossaries and footnotes with definitions and explanations. I made sure that students had access to various formats of the Harry Potter books, including large print editions, text readers, digital readers, and audio books. And we analyzed the themes of the Harry Potter series primarily through individual and group exploration of the novels, movies, web sites, blogs, music, and comics.

Multiple means of engagement:

Students also differ markedly in the ways in which they are motivated to learn. Some students are highly engaged by spontaneity and novelty in the learning environment. While some students appreciate risk and challenge, others want certainty and clear guidelines. Group projects and collaborative learning attract some students, while others prefer individual assignments. Some students are independent learners while others seek teacher and peer support. Hence, alternative means of engagement are crucial, as no one approach will engage all students. 70

To offer multiple means of engagement, I gave the students opportunities to work independently but also collaboratively with other students and created projects and assignments that allowed for active participation, creativity, individual expression, and exploration. The second day of class, I sorted students into the four Hogwarts houses featured in the series-Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff-and they remained in these Houses for the rest of the semester. Students collaborated with fellow House members in discussion and study sessions and worked together on House teaching presentations and group term projects. Houses competed for the highly coveted House Cup by earning points throughout the semester for individual discussion and scores on assignments, group projects, trivia games, and our hugely successful Halloween event, during which the students dressed as characters from the series and created Hogwarts-inspired foods and drinks. We invited members of the campus community into our classroom during the event to sample the concoctions and to vote for their favorite costumes. In order to further shift away from a teacher-centered to a student-centered approach, I attempted to include students as much as possible in course design. As Jay Dolmage notes, teachers should not be the only designers of course content but should work actively with students to develop pedagogy that is considered, flexible, and responsive to students' needs. 71 Throughout the semester, students contributed to the creation of exam questions and other assessments and engaged in self and peer evaluations. Each House was responsible for creating a teaching presentation based on materials and themes that members of the House selected. When evaluating students' work, I made sure that my comments were positive and encouraging and contained specific information for how to improve performance, and I gave students the opportunity to redo assignments using my feedback and suggestions. No in-class activity lasted longer than twenty minutes, which allowed for variation in the pace of work and gave students opportunities for breaks.

Multiple means of expression:

Due to their wide range of physical and neurological abilities and cultural experiences and backgrounds, students differ greatly in the ways they can work within a learning environment and express what they know. 69 Yet, in most classrooms, options for the expression of knowledge are often limited to exams, essays, and class discussion. While some students effectively express their thoughts through these more traditional methods, other students better display knowledge through other means, such as performance, art projects, music, film production, digital chat rooms, and web site design. A Universal Design for Learning approach recognizes that there is no one means of expression that will be optimal for all students, nor one kind of scaffolding or support that will help them as they learn to express themselves. Providing diverse students with a variety of options for expressing what they know, therefore, is key.

To offer multiple means of expression, I allowed students to participate actively through a variety of means, including in-class discussion, course chat rooms, handing in written notes on course readings, and outside-of-class reflective essays. Students also demonstrated knowledge through short response papers, film reports, group teaching presentations, and a collaborative term project, which could be based on any subject relevant to Harry Potter and American culture and be submitted in any format the students chose, including film, music composition, art work, performance, or forms of written expression. I was astounded by the level of creativity and enthusiasm the students exhibited in creating and presenting their projects. Members of Slytherin House performed a dating game called "How to Date A Slytherin"; members of Hufflepuff used drawings by creating a set of story boards that reimagined the series from Neville Longbottom's point of view; Ravenclaw House wrote a prequel to the Harry Potter series, with each member contributing a chapter to the story; and members of Gryffindor used film to create a tabloid-style newscast narrated by Rita Skeeter featuring some of the more colorful Harry Potter characters.

To these suggestions for reducing the biases of curricular content, I would add that the current literature on Universal Design for Learning also needs to address more fully how UDL helps to dismantle the barriers created by gender and racial segregation in special education. After all, when students look around their school environment and notice that the overwhelming majority of children assigned to special education services and classrooms are black boys, what messages about gender and race are they absorbing, and how does this awareness affect the learning of students outside of and within these classrooms? And, as Hackman notes, future scholarship needs to address more fully how UDL's emphasis on the implementation of universal design through technology interacts with issues of class, gender, age, and race. Due to generational differences, patterns of gender socialization, and the unequal distribution of economic resources in schools, students who are female, nontraditional, working-class, or persons of color, for example, are disproportionately affected by the "digital divide," that is, forms of economic and social inequality created by lack of access to, use of, or knowledge of information and communication technologies. "To assume that making classrooms accessible without attending to these issues is naive at best," Hackman writes, "and a reproduction of those very forms of oppression at worst." 77

Finally, how do we promote a universal approach to learning without collapsing important distinctions between the perceptions, treatment, and lived experiences of students categorized as disabled and students categorized as "able bodied?" Within a UDL framework, how do we recognize that the actual lived experiences of disability give some students particular identities and narratives that allow them to make epistemological claims about ableist assumptions and policies within their educational institutions and wider communities and the need for greater social justice? And how do these sorts of situated knowledges, as well as the social locations of all students, contribute to the democratic production of knowledge in the classroom?

Conclusion

Ultimately, Universal Design for Learning locates value in productions of knowledge that have been traditionally ignored, marginalized, or denigrated. I was reminded of this recently while watching Zoey work on an assessment with her speech therapist. The therapist was showing Zoey a series of pictures and asking her to form story arcs based on the stories that the pictures collectively illustrated. The "correct" subject of one of the pictures, for example, was a mother nervously waving goodbye to her son who was boarding a school bus for the first time. But instead of focusing on the picture's central subject, Zoey fixated on the lower frame of the picture where a cat sat looking rather forlornly, in her view. To whom did the cat belong, she wondered? Clearly the cat was hungry-who would feed it? Where would the cat sleep at night? Despite the therapist's insistence that her focus was incorrect, Zoey stubbornly refused to alter her gaze and instead continued to worry about the cat. And as the therapist grew visibly more frustrated, I stifled my impulse to laugh. After all, why was Zoey's concern for the cat wrong or misguided? Why was attention to the mother and her son more valued? And perhaps most importantly, who gets to make this decision? Zoey's tendency to create knowledge from the margins led her to form new meanings about what she was seeing that necessarily disrupted and challenged the pictures' master narratives. In much the same way, Universal Design for Learning gives students and teachers the power to form new discourses that have the potential to radically transform restrictive ideologies and institutions and that create new, multiple understandings of the "right" way to see, hear, think, and know.

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Notes

1. Susan Baglieri, Lynne Bejoian, Alicia Broderick, David Connor, and Jan Valle, "[Re]claiming 'Inclusive Education' Toward Cohesion in Educational Reform: Disability Studies Unravels the Myth of the Normal Child," Teachers College Record 113:10 (October 2011): 2126-2128. See also Alicia Broderick, Heeral Mehta-Parekh, and D. Kim Reid, "Differentiating Instruction for Disabled Students in Inclusive Classrooms," Theory Into Practice 44:3 (Summer 2005): 194-202. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4403_3
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2. David Connor and Beth Ferri, "The Conflict Within: Resistance to Inclusion and Other Paradoxes in Special Education," Disability and Society 22:1 (December 2006): 63-77. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590601056717; Stanley Wigle and Daryl Wilcox, "Inclusion," Remedial and Special Education 17:5 (September 1996): 323-329. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193259601700508
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3. Duhaney and Salend, 126. See also Spencer Salend and Laurel Garrick Dehaney, "The Impact of Inclusion on Students With and Without Disabilities and Their Educators," Remedial and Special Education 20:2 (March/April 1999): 114-126. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193259902000209; and Dev Poonam and Leslie Haynes, "Teacher Perspectives on Suitable Learning Environments for Students with Disabilities: What Have We Learned from Inclusive, Resource, and Self-Contained Classrooms?" International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences 9 (May 2015): 53-64.
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4. See, for example, David Connor and Beth Ferri, "Integration and Inclusion: A Troubling Nexus: Race, Disability, and Special Education," The Journal of African American History 90 (Winter 2005): 107-127; D. Kim Reid and Michelle Knight, "Disability Justifies the Exclusion of Minority Students: A Critical History Grounded in Disability Studies," Educational Researcher 35:6 (August/September 2006): 18-23; Wanda Blanchett, "Disproportionate Representation of African American Students in Special Education: Acknowledging the Role of White Privilege and Racism," Educational Researcher 35:6 (August/September 2006): 24-28. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X035006024; Carla O'Connor and Sonia DeLuca Fernandez, "Race, Class, and Disproportionality: Reevaluating the Relationship between Poverty and Special Education Placement," Educational Researcher 35:6 (Aug/September 2006): 6-11. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X035006006
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5. Martha Coutinho and Donald Oswald, "State Variation in Gender Disproportionality in Special Education," Remedial and Special Education 26:1 (January/February 2005): 8; Jennifer Tschantz and Joy Markowitz, "Gender and Special Education: Current State Data Collection," Project Forum, January 2003, 2, accessed August 2, 2015, http://www.nasdse.org/DesktopModules/DNNspot-Store/ProductFiles/143_49aabfa1-ef5c-4ece-9cbc-cedc6a405578.pdf.
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6. Emily Arms, Jill Bickett, and Victoria Graf, "Gender Bias and Imbalance: Girls in US Special Education Programmes," Gender and Education 20:4 (July 2008): 349-359. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250802190180. See also Coutinho and Oswald, 7-15; Amanda Sullivan and Aydin Bal, "Disproportionality in Special Education: Effects of Individual and School Variables on Disability Risk," Exceptional Children 79:4 (Summer 2013): 475-494. Martha Coutinho, Donald Oswald, and Al Best, "The Influence of Sociodemographics and Gender on the Disproportionate Identification of Minority Students as Having Learning Disabilities," Remedial and Special Education 23:1 (January/February 2002): 49-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193250202300107; Kathy Piechura-Couture, Elizabeth Heins, and Mercedes Tichenor, "The Boy Factor: Can Single-Gender Classes Reduce the Overrepresentation of Boys in Special Education?" College Student Journal, 47:2 (Summer 2013): 235-243.
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7. See, for example, M. Gill, "The Other 25%: Autistic Girls and Women," European Psychiatry 33 (March 2016): 432-432. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2016.01.1246; Katharina Dworzynski, Angelica Ronald, Patrick Bolton, and Francesca Happe, "How Different Are Girls and Boys Above and Below the Diagnostic Threshold for Autism Spectrum Disorders?" Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology 51 (August 2012): 788-797. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2012.05.018; and Agnieszka Rynkiewicz, Erik Marchi, Björn Schuller, Stefano Piana, Antonio Camurri, Amandine Lassalle, and Simon Baron-Cohen, "An Investigation of the 'Female Camouflage Effect' in Autism Using a Computerized ADOS-2 and a Test of Sex/Gender Differences," Molecular Autism 7 (January 21, 2016): 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-016-0073-0
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8. Donald Oswald, Al Best, Martha Coutinho and Heather Nagle, "Trends in the Special Education Identification Rates of Boys and Girls: A Call for Research and Change," Exceptionality 11 (2003): 223-237. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327035EX1104_3; Beth Ferri and David Connor, "'I Was the Special Ed Girl': Urban Working-Class Young Women of Colour," Gender and Education 22:1 (January 2010): 105-121. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250802612688. See also Coutinho and Oswald, 7-15; Sullivan and Bal, 475-494; Coutinho, Oswald, and Best, 49-59; and Piechura-Couture, et al., 235-243. Most scholars note that the underreprentation of girls in disability categories is evident across all racial and ethnic groups. But Subini Ancy Annamma claims that while girls as a whole "are underrepresented in disciplinary actions and special education, . . . young women of color and young women who identify as queer are overrepresented in both categories." See Subini Ancy Annamma, "It Was Just Like a Piece of Gum: Using an Intersectional Approach to Understand Criminalizing Young Women of Color with Disabilities in the School to Prison Pipeline," in Practicing Disability Studies in Education: Acting Toward Social Change, eds., David Connor, Jan Valle, and Chris Hale, (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), 84.
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9. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, "Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory," National Women's Studies Association Journal 14:3 (2002), 5-6. https://doi.org/10.2979/NWS.2002.14.3.1. See also Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
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10. For example, the book Universal Design in Higher Education: From Principles to Practice edited by Sheryl Burgstahler and Rebecca Cory (Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2008) devotes only one out of twenty-four chapters to how UDL can accommodate students with psychiatric disorders. Similarly, Jeanne Higbee and Emily Goff, eds., Pedagogy and Student Services for Institutional Transformation: Implementing Universal Design in Higher Education (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2008) includes only one chapter out of thirty-eight to the issue of invisible disabilities and the need for safe environments for disclosure.
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Reimagining Disability and Inclusive Education Through Universal Design for Learning | Wilson | Disability Studies Quarterly

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Disabled students are inconvenient. How varies by disability.... Autistic? Depressed? OCD? They don't want to deal with that. So it just doesn't exist. We don't have those problems here. They do, of course, but they pretend it's not there. With no obvious difference, nothing you can see that says there is something different, they can pretend.

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The SETT Framework: A Model for Selection and Use of Assistive Technology Tools and More

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The SETT Framework: A Model for Selection and Use of Assistive Technology Tools and More

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The SETT Framework: A Model for Selection and Use of Assistive Technology Tools and More

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This chapter discusses the SETT Framework - an acronym for Student, Environments, Tasks and Tools - a decision-making tool originally designed to help collaborative teams gather and organise information that can be used to guide decisions about assistive technology (AT) devices and services that foster the educational success of students with disabilities (Zabala, 1995).

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Critical Areas to Consider When Making Informed AT Decisions

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Critical Areas to Consider When Making Informed AT Decisions

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, Assistive Technology Specialist/Special Education Consultant

Published on

presentation about assistive technology assessment for ARHS

1. 1. Assistive Technology Assessment<br />Kate Ahern, M.S.Ed.<br />

2. 2. Agenda<br />Agenda<br />What is assistive technology?<br />A little contest<br />SETT Framework In Depth<br />Case Study<br />WATI Overview<br />Where to find AT Solutions<br />

3. 3. Legal Definitions<br />Assistive technology device means any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. <br />Assistive technology service means any service that directly assists an individual with a disability in the selection, acquisition, or use of an assistive technology device.<br />Assistive Technology, legally, must be considered at every IEP meeting.<br />

4. 4. A Little Contest<br />What do you know?<br />Divide into teams<br />Name as many assistive technology devices as you can in two minutes<br />

5. 5. SETT Framework<br />Create by Joy Smiley Zabala, 1995<br />A framework for assessment - NOT a set of forms or a protocol<br />Designed to be used by interdisciplinary teams to determine Assistive Technology needs<br />

6. 6. Aspects of a SETT Based Assessment<br />Shared Knowledge: One of the major premises of the SETT Framework is that decisions about Tools-the devices and actions that are needed for the student and others to succeed-are most valid when they are made based not on the knowledge that one person has (or believes that they have) but based on an agreed-upon, mutually valid shared knowledge of the student, the environments, and the task.<br />Collaboration: The SETT Framework is tool that both requires and supports the collaboration of the people who will be involved in the decision-making and those who will be impacted by the decisions. Collaboration is not only critical for the SETT Framework, it is also critical to gaining the buy-in necessary for effective implementation of any decisions.<br />Communication: The SETT Framework requires that people communicate actively and respectfully. Shared knowledge can only be developed if the opinions, ideas, observations, and suggestions are respected and respectful.<br />Multiple Perspectives: Everyone involved beings different knowledge, skills, experience, and ideas to the table. Although multiple perspectives can be challenging at times they are critical to the development of the accurate, complete development of shared knowledge. Not only are the multiple professional perspectives important to include, but also those of the student and the parents. This can make the difference between success and lack there-of.<br />From Zabala, 2005<br />

7. 7. The Student<br />What is the functional area(s) of concern? What does the student need to be able to<br />do that is difficult or impossible to do independently at this time?<br />Special needs (related to area of concern)<br />Current abilities (related to area of concern)<br />

8. 8. The Environments<br />Arrangement (instructional, physical)<br />Support (available to both the student and the staff)<br />Materials and Equipment (commonly used by others in the environments)<br />Access Issues (technological, physical, instructional)<br />Attitudes and Expectations (staff, family, others)<br />

9. 9. The Tasks<br />What SPECIFIC tasks occur in the student's natural environments that enable progress toward mastery of IEP goals and objectives?<br />What SPECIFIC tasks are required for active involvement in identified environments? (related to communication, instruction, participation, productivity, environmental control)<br />

10. 10. Case Study<br />Student<br />Karen, age 14, ninth grade<br />Special Education since age 3, formerly received OT and SLP services<br />Cognitive abilities tested in average to low-average range<br />Diagnosed with ADD (without hyperactivity, on medication) and dyslexia<br />Difficulties with auditory processing, word retrieval, decoding and encoding text, fluency, auditory and reading comprehension, spelling and visual motor processing<br />Teachers describe as "quiet", "sweet", "hardworking"<br />Very sensitive to "appearing different"<br />Enjoys using the computer<br />Karen self reports difficulties with organization, spelling , handwriting, moving through the process of draft to final product<br />Karen's mother agrees but also worries about math, general knowledge abilities and life skills<br />

11. 11. Environment<br />Lives at home with both parents, younger brother and a two dogs<br />Currently takes most classes in the resource room (typing, physical science, life skills math, first aid, Wilson Reading, study skills and history)<br />Every classroom Karen has classes in has a computer and she has a computer at home<br />

12. 12. Tasks<br />Karen educational need to meet her IEP goals are:<br />Word retrieval when writing<br />Spelling<br />Handwriting<br />Composition organization<br />Organization<br />Attending in class<br />

13. 13. Tools<br />Karen's IEP currently lists a computer as assistive technology without reference to software or hardware adaptations<br />In late elementary school Karen used an Alphasmart but abandoned its use do to "looking weird"<br />

14. 14. Where do you go from here?<br />As a group discuss Karen and her needs.<br />Do you have enough information to evaluate Karen for assistive technology?<br />What devices would you like to share with Karen or possibly trial with her and why?<br />Is there any other information you need and how will you go about getting it?<br />

15. 15. WATI<br />A comprehensive guide to the process of assessing for assistive technology needs<br />Inclusive of SETT<br />Views AT Assessment as an ongoing, team process<br />The WATI Includes:<br />The WATI Student Information Guide<br />The WATI Environmental Observation Guide<br />The WATI Assistive Technology Decision Making Guide<br />The WATI Assistive Technology Checklist<br />

16. 16. The Steps of the WATI<br />Step 1: Team Members Gather Information<br />Step 2: Schedule Meeting<br />Step 3: Team Completes Problem Identification Portion of AT Planning Guide at the Meeting (SETT).<br />Step 4: Prioritize the List of Tasks for Solution Generation<br />Step 5: Solution Generation<br />Step 6: Solution Selection<br />Step 7: Implementation Plan<br />Step 8: Implement Planned Trials<br />Step 9: Follow Up on Planned Date<br />

17. 17. Finding AT Solutions<br />Able Data: http://www.abledata.com/<br />Adapted Solutions: http://www.adaptedsolutions.org/<br />AssistiveTechNet: http://assistivetech.net/<br />Closing the Gap: http://www.closingthegap.com/<br />MassMatch: http://www.massmatch.org/<br />TechMatrix: http://www.techmatrix.org/<br />UDL Tech Tool Kit Wiki http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/<br />

18. 18. Notes for this session available at:<br />http://intensivespedresources.wikispaces.com/Assisitive+Technology+Assessment<br />You may contact the presenter, Kate Ahern,<br />at kahern@assabet.org or katerahern@gmail.com<br />

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Assistive Technology Specialist/Special Education Consultant Published on presentation about assistive technology assessment for ARHS 1. Assistive Technology Assessment Kate Ahern, M.S.Ed. 2. Agenda Agenda What is assistive technology? A little contest SETT Framework In Depth Case Study WATI Overview Where to find AT Solutions 3.

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Part I-Gathering Data and Making Decisions Using a collaborative approach, complete the following information in preparation for a presentation to your colleagues on a student in your area of...

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SETT Scaffold for Consideration of AT Needs

SETT Scaffold for Data Gathering

SETT Scaffold for Implementation and Evaluation of Effectiveness Planning

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AT Screening and Consideration Checklist 

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AT Screening and Consideration Checklist 

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~prepared by Ivan

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Feb 2023_SPD-MOE SEN Teacher Leaders Training_Groupwork Responses

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SPD SATC_Feb 2023_MOE SEN Training_Participant's copy

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Breaking the language barrier at home, at work, anywhere you need it Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs while offline, websites, documents, and more using the Translator apps Globalize your business and customer interactions by translating text and speech using the Translator API and Speech service, both in the Azure Cognitive Services family Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Elementary Learning Experience Platform | Seesaw

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Seesaw is a Learning Experience Platform with 25M+ users, enhancing elementary education, engagement, and school culture while improving academic success.

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Bitmoji is your own personal emoji. Create an expressive cartoon avatar, choose from a growing library of moods and stickers - featuring YOU! Put them into any text message, chat or status update.

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Dyslexia Writing & Reading Assistive Technology | Ghotit Dyslexia

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How does Ghotit Dyslexia Keyboard App for iPad and iPhone work?

The keyboard for dyslexia and dysgraphia assistance is an integrated writing and reading solution comprising several advanced adaptive technologies tailor-made for people with dyslexia, dysgraphia and other learning disabilities. It helps children and adults with dyslexia and dysgraphia to write, read and correct texts.

Ghotit Quick Spell Word-Prediction is a state-of-art technology designed for writers with typing issues and phonetic/creative writers; this technology increases writing speed and successfully predicts intended words with instant correction of the first misspelled letters.

Ghotit's patented technology provides the most appropriate corrections for spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes according to the intended meaning of a text.

What does Ghotit Dyslexia Keyboard App include?

* Quick-Spell Word-Prediction with instant correction for creative/phonetic writers
* Context-sensitive and phonetic spell checker
* Corrector of confused words including homophones
* Grammar and punctuation corrector
* An effective proofreader
* Speak as you write (speech feedback)
* Integrated dictionary
* Reading assistance with dual highlighting
* Dictation to any app

Which iPad and iPhone devices are supported?

The keyboard works at any iPad or iPhone with iOS-10 and up.

How to setup the keyboard?

After downloading the app from the iTunes iOS App Store
in line with Apple's practices for adding a new custom keyboard, do the below steps:

* Open the Settings and go down to General. Tap Settings.
* Scroll down and tap "Keyboard".
* In menu "Keyboard", tap the top entry "Keyboards".
* Tap "Add New Keyboard".
* Select "Dyslexia Keyboard".
* Tap "Dyslexia Keyboard - Dyslexia Keyboard Ghotit"
* In "Allow Full Access", move the switch to the right to Allow.
* In the alert appearing confirm "Allow". Optionally, read the Privacy Policy.
* Open up some editor or text area to write some text.
* Tap the Globe icon on your software keyboard until appears Dyslexia Keyboard.
* If you do not hear text-to-speech voice when reading aloud or tapping predicted words, please check that Full Access in "Allow Full Access" is enabled as described above and voice at your iPad/iPhone has not been muted in Settings or by a Side-Switch.

Does Dyslexia Keyboard require an Internet connection?

Spelling and grammar correction does require Internet connection. All other features are working offline.

Which English dictionaries does Dyslexia Keyboard support?

Australian, Canadian, US and UK English.

How to use the keyboard Word-Prediction?

* Single-Tapping a Predicted Word, reads it aloud.
* Long-Tap-and-Release gesture provides descriptions/explanations for most words.
* To select a Predicted Word, Double-Tap it or Swipe it left or right.
* You can change the above behavior in the keyboard Settings (see below) by enabling "Tap to Select Prediction". Thus, Single-Tap will select a Predicted Word whereas Double-Tap or Swipe could be used to read it aloud.

How can I change the keyboard Settings?

* To access the keyboard Settings, tap the Globe and Settings Icon.
* Following tap, appears the popup with the Settings Icon and current English Dictionary selected.
* Tap the Settings Icon.
* Change the Settings. Among other functions, you can choose the English Dictionary (US, UK, CA or AU) to be appropriate for your usage/location. Speech Rate and some other options could be also adjusted.

How to use the keyboard for Spelling and Grammar Correction?

* To correct a paragraph, place the cursor somewhere in the middle of its first sentence.
Pay attention not to select words.

* Tap the ABC button and wait a few seconds. The sentence appears with:
- Red-underlined misspelled words
- Blue-underlined suspected misused words
- Green-underlined suspected grammar errors

* Get more information on Suggested words
Tap the underlined words and get for each one Correction Suggestions appearing from the right.
Tap a Suggestion to read it aloud and, optionally, tap the Description area to read aloud explanations
or usage examples for that Suggestion.

* Select a Suggestion.
To select a Suggestion, Double-Tap or Swipe it.

* Apply the corrections.
Further tap another underlined word and correct it.
When done, apply the corrected sentence by tapping button "V" and waiting for a couple seconds
till the corrected paragraph/sentence replaces the original.

* If you do not want to correct something, just tap the Back button with keyboard image.

* To correct sentence-by-sentence instead of by paragraphs, disable "Correct Paragraphs" in Settings.

How to read a phrase out loud?

* To read a sentence aloud, place the cursor somewhere in the middle of the sentence.
Pay attention not to select words.
* Tap the Speaker button.
* Text is read aloud.
* To return back, tap the Back button with keyboard image.

How can I turn off Speech Feedback?

When writing a text, Dyslexia Keyboard by default reads aloud each word written.
That could be changed in Dyslexia Keyboard Settings by disabling the "Speak As I Write" switch.

How to read out loud descriptions of words?

* Place a cursor at a word, but do not select it.
* Tap the Descriptions button.
* The descriptions are read aloud.
* For a Predicted Word, get descriptions by Long-Tap-and-Release gesture at the button where the Predicted Word appears.

How to configure another font for the keyboard?

First, enable Gill Sans keyboard font in the keyboard Settings and restart the app where you are writing:
put it to background and swipe it out. Next, run the app again and use Dyslexia Keyboard with Gill Sans fonts.

How to dictate to apps when using the keyboard?

Long-press the microphone image located at the space bar button.
The dictation page appears; tap there microphone to begin dictation and dictate.
The dictated text is collected at the dictation page.
Tap the button "Apply the Dictated Text" at any moment to return back to your app and
insert the dictated text.

Where is the place to order the app?

What is the difference between Dyslexia Keyboard and Ghotit Real Writer for iPad?

Dyslexia Keyboard App is a custom iOS keyboard working with other apps like editors, text areas of browsers, social networks, etc. apps on iPad and iPhone.

Ghotit Real Writer for iPad ("Dyslexia Editor") is an editor by itself providing simple word-processing functions with the same set of assistive features as Dyslexia Keyboard and creating an attention concentrating environment; it is very helpful for children and adults with severe dyslexia/dysgraphia.

Is there an option to order a bundle of Ghotit Apps for iPad?

Where I can get more information about Ghotit and its services?

How to contact Ghotit Support Team?

Contact by email: support at ghotit.com

Ghotit Dyslexia Keyboard App was last modified: by

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How does Ghotit Dyslexia Keyboard App for iPad and iPhone work? The keyboard for dyslexia and dysgraphia assistance is an integrated writing and reading solution comprising several advanced adaptive technologies tailor-made for people with dyslexia, dysgraphia and other learning disabilities. It helps children and adults with dyslexia and dysgraphia to write, read and correct texts.