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Assistive Technology: Empowering Students with

Learning DisabilitiesArticle

Karen E. Forgrave

“Assistive technology is described as having two purposes: To build on individual strengths; and to compensate for students’ disabilities to enable them to better perform a given task.”

• Forgrave focuses on reading and writing skills for students with learning disabilities.

Assistive Technology: Empowering Students with Learning Disabilities

• Most students with learning disabilities display slow and effortful word decoding skills. (Lundberg 1995)

• Many have problems with basic skills, such as spelling and grammar, as well as higher level skills, such as the planning, organization, and revision of a piece of work. (Graham et al. 1998)

• Mechanical difficulties, including difficulty with hand writing, also contribute to the fact that children with learning disabilities produce less written work and work that is lower in quality than their typically achieving peers. (Lewis 1998)

• Speech Synthesis:

Assistive Technology: Empowering Students with Learning Disabilities

•Speech synthesis programs work by translating text that appears on the computer screen into computerized speech. (Lewis 1998)•Entering text by typing it into the speech synthesis program and scanning the text are ways to use speech synthesis programs.

• Benefits?•When students with word recognition problems used speech synthesis software while reading stories on the computer, they demonstrated significantly improved word recognition skills. (Higgins and Raskind 2000)•Torgesen and Barker (1995) also reported significant improvements in word recognition and phonological decoding abilities after students used books with a voice component.

• Organizational Software:

Assistive Technology: Empowering Students with Learning Disabilities

•Software such as Inspiration helps students to organize information and ideas through a variety of “webs” or concept-maps on the computer screen.•Ideas can be entered as visual organizers, which the program then translates into outlines for the students to follow while writing.•The outline is automatically rearranged as more information is added to the “webs”

• Benefits?•Studies have shown that using visual organizers to plan the writing process significantly improves the quality of writing for students with learning disabilities. (Graham et al. 1998)

Inspiration Software, Inc. - The Leader in Visual Thinking and Learning | inspiration.com

• Voice Recognition Software

Assistive Technology: Empowering Students with Learning Disabilities

•Voice recognition software can help students bypass their problems with lower-order writing skills by dictating their written work. (McEwan 1998)•When students use voice recognition software they wear a headset and operate the computer by voice commands.•Speech to text software allows students to get their ideas down before they are forgotten because of slow typing speed.

• Benefits?•Writing essays written with voice recognition software was significantly faster than typing or handwriting. (De La Paz 1999)•A meta-analysis of five studies found that stories that students wrote using speech to text dictation were longer, more complex, and contained fewer grammatical errors than ones composed using other methods. When students with learning disabilities improve the legibility of their work and decrease the number of errors, research has shown that their marks will improve. (Graham 1999)

Teacher-Created Electronic Books: Integrating Technology to Support

Readers with DisabilitiesArticle

Joan A. Rhodes &Tammy M. Milby

Disabilities Education Act of 2004 defines assistive technology as “any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially or off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of a child with a disability.” (IDEA, 2004)

Teacher-Created Electronic Books: Integrating Technology to Support Readers with Disabilities• Why Use Electronic Books?• E-books typically replicate traditional storybooks, but add multimedia effects to support student understanding of the content.• Through the use of e-books, students are exposed to sound, animation, and interactive activities that scaffold learning and are able to master tasks that may not be accomplished independently.

• Electronic Books are a Cheaper Assistive Technology!• Teachers are able to make e-books for students with disabilities with the use of items that are likely to already be in the classroom: Computers, Microsoft PowerPoint (or a similar program), and a Smart Board• Through the use of teacher-created e-books, students with disabilities are able to gain access to literature which are directly related to the curriculum of the general education students.

• Benefits?• As a form of assistive technology, e-books give students greater access to classroom materials, fostering fluency and comprehension. Integrating e-books and classroom instructional practices boosts achievement and ensures that all students are successful literacy learners.

Free Assistive Technology Software

• Camera MouseCamera Mouse is free downloadable software that requires a computer and webcam. It allows students with disabilities to use their head as the mouse if they do not have reliable control of their hands. This software can be used in and outside of the classroom.

“Camera Mouse has given her a way to communicate her thoughts, it gives the school that she is attending a way to adapt the curriculum so that she can participate in a REGULAR preschool, it puts her in a situation where people can see her ABILITIES rather than her disabilities. When she uses the Camera Mouse, she is alert, attentive and responsive. She controls the mouse with her chin and plays with educational software.” –Mother of a Young Child

Free Assistive Technology Software

Free AT Software | School of Medicine | University of Colorado Denver

• Group Activity1. For the next 10 minutes you will be asked to go to the

following website and chose from a list of ‘Free AT Software’ just as we did.

2. We would like you to come up with a story based on one of the assistive technology software that you would incorporate into your classroom as a teacher.

3. Why would it benefit your students? How could you incorporate it into your lessons?

http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/programs/atp/Resources/FreeATSoftware/Pages/FreeATSoftware.aspx