Assistive Technology

Assistive Technology and Universal Design for Learning: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Rose, Hasselbring, Stahl, Zabala

From my understanding assistive technologies are created to help students overcome barrier specific to that student’s disability and environment. The universal design for learning creates products to reduce barriers to accommodate to a wide range of students. Both assistive technologies and universal designs for learning work hand in hand with each other in the way that when thinking about peoples specific needs the general or universal design will be effective and useful to a variety of disabilities.

After reading this article it really got me thinking about the students with disabilities in my school and how the school provides them with assistive technologies and universal design for learning. There are several students who come to school with their electric wheelchairs and recently one of our teachers is now in an electric wheelchair that specifically fits her needs. Architecturally, we do have wide hallways and elevators, but one design flaw they could have worked on is the lockers. All of the lockers are close together and for a student in a wheel chair they should probably include more space around the locker as well as more shelf spaces at a level where their books can be stored and reached. Our school should also think about installing the electric doors, so when they enter and exit the building that can do it on their own. Independence is very important to people with limited mobility.

In the classroom there are many things that we try to adapt in our curriculum to fit the students’ needs. With the recent growth in technology in relation to the textbook, it’s good to see the electronic version of the textbook, so it can be adapted in such ways to enlarge the text or even convert to Braille. This brings me back to a couple years ago when I had a student who was blind in my art class. I have never experienced this before, so I thought it was a good learning experience. In the back of my head whatever I was doing with the other students in my classroom, I had to think about what I would do with the student who was blind. Any reading materials and worksheets had to been given to his aid to be transferred into Braille. When talking about color, I used scented markers to help him identify colors and tried to use raised textures to help him identify spaces on a drawing surface. Creating 3D pieces of work came easier that 2D due to the fact that it is more tactile for him to manipulate with.