Assistive Technology: Free and
Affordable Help for Everyone

Question 1

What exactly is assistive technology and how does it relate to the average person?

Answer

Assistive technology is any technology that we use to enhance or modify a person with a disability’s functioning so that they are able to do the same types of activities as others. The way I like to think about assistive technology is to think of the wheelchair. Before the wheelchair was developed, if someone was paraplegic and they had to get from point A to point B, they could either pull themselves across the ground, a very effortful task, or they could ask someone to pick them up and move them, not allowing for a lot of independence. With the development of the wheelchair, that person can move from point A to point B much more efficiently and independently. That is the promise of assistive technology, to allow individuals who have a disability to use technology to do things more independently and more efficiently than if they didn’t have it.

Question 2

How is assistive technology in practical use today?

Answer

It’s everywhere. So, you have your traditional devices to help with physical and sensory impairments: wheelchairs, walkers, canes, hearing aids, and all that. Then you get into the educational field where you have students with learning disabilities who, for example, are unable to read at the speeds needed to keep up, so they have text-to-speech software that can read out loud. We have students who have difficulties with organizing their ideas, so we have these graphic organizing programs to help them to consolidate their ideas and put them out. We have individuals who forget stuff, so we have our amazing smartphones with alarms built into them and the ability to know where they are in space, so as they are about to leave the school a reminder goes up saying, “Hey, did you actually get those textbooks out of your locker?”

If you look at the technology in the learning environment, the only thing that makes it assistive is that it’s being used by someone with a disability. You and I are using the exact same technology. We have our computers reading to us, like our GPS’s that talk out loud. That’s using text-to-speech software. We talk to Siri and Google these days with voice recognition software. We have our reminders on our apps to tell us what to do. So, the only thing that’s really making assistive technology assistive technology right now is the way we’re employing it to overcome or bypass an area of disability for a specific person.

Question 3

Are you seeing any specific challenges to accessing assistive technology in the classroom?

Answer

Here some of the major areas. Area number one: School boards are often governed by their information technology groups, their IT. And so therefore the products that they choose may not necessarily be the tools that a specific student needs. So, they might be saying, “Oh, look at that big suite of tools over here. We pay a licensing agreement with this company, we’re going to get all of this stuff. That’s great.” But what happens is that they sit the student down and go, “I will train you on all of these tools,” but really the student only needs one of the tools. So, what happens is that they get confused. It’s an over-prescription of assistive technology that occurs. Also, classroom teachers are often completely removed from the decision-making process for choosing the AT products and don’t understand their purpose.

The next major area that we run into is the perception of what’s going on. I always love the worksheet. So, you have a student who has like a $2,000 laptop with all of this cool reading software built into it. And then the teacher comes with the worksheet and gives it to all of the students. Well, the problem with the worksheet is that I still have to get that worksheet into my laptop to be able to have it read out loud. So, suddenly we have an inherent barrier that has just come up for that student. Now, we can use smartphones to take pictures of it and download in into the laptop or we can have a portable scanner with the student. There are ways to work around this stuff, but the students don’t do that because it’s an additional step.

Question 4

It’s a hassle.

Answer

It’s a total hassle. The other thing that we’ve found is that a lot of school boards are going for internet-based stuff. Google Classroom, for example, is really big these days. But if you are living in a rural community and you don’t have really super high-speed internet, when you’re using these products, they’re taking a long time to load. We have an article that’s coming out right now looking at the average bandwidth in rural Ontario and how long it takes for a student to activate their assistive technology. There’s a rule that basically says if it takes more than nine seconds to like turn a program, students these days just stop using it. What we’re finding is that some of this internet-based assistive technology takes over two minutes for it to load when you’re in a rural area with low bandwidth. And so again, what do we see? Students just don’t use it.

Question 5

What’s the answer to that? Getting faster internet would be one, I suppose.

Answer

Or we need to really have an understanding of the ecosystem that we’re deploying the technology into. You know, if you don’t have the internet then don’t buy internet-based assistive technology, buy a computer-based program. If you are going to have a student use technology for the computer to read out loud, then provide work in a digital format to that student. We wouldn’t give a student a wheelchair and not provide a ramp into the school. That’s kind of what’s happening at this point. We’re not actually stepping back and thinking about the full ecosystem in which we need to deploy the technology to make it successful.

A big piece of this is just teachers needing better training to understand what the technology actually is. Teachers spend a lot of time in the classroom trying to teach the kids how to use these programs, but that’s not the help they need. They just need to be allowed to use [the programs] and have materials provided in a format that allows them to be able to deal with it.

Question 6

So, it’s educating the teachers and getting the kids up to speed a little bit, and then the kids pretty much take it from there.

Answer

Oh, yeah. Kids are quite amazing in how well they can use computer programs.

Question 7

What can parents do to help get their kids the assistive technology they need?

Answer

So, the first thing they have to do is find the right technology tool to help their student. To try to help, we’ve created a website called ATSelect, and what ATSelect does is help guide the user through a process of decision-making. Basically, users ask, “What are the challenges my child is having?” and we recommend the type of technology tool that they should be using. So, that’s a really important thing. You have to know what the right tool is to help the student that you are working with.

Once we have the tool aspect done, the second thing is that it’s really important for parents to work with their child at home to start to feel comfortable using the technology before rushing to the school to deploy it. If we rush to the school to deploy it and we run into some of the barriers that we were just talking about, then the student is most likely to abandon the technology and it’s very hard to get them back onto it.

Question 8

Is cost a factor for families these days or are we finding that it’s not quite the problem it used to be?

Answer

It depends on what tool you need. So, let’s take reading tools, which represent 80% of the tools that most students with learning disabilities require. Text-to-speech, it’s free. It’s built into Microsoft, it’s built into Mac OS. If you can’t find either of those, you can go and download the free software off the internet. Voice recognition for talking to a computer is free, too. Again, all of the major companies have it built into their operating systems. Now, if you want the state-of-the-art one, you will have to fork over like $300, but it’s not required to do that at this point. So, cost should not be a major barrier.

The place where cost comes in is just getting your first device. Parents need to know that they don’t have to run out and buy like a $2,000 Mac Book. You can buy a Chromebook these days or you can get a $300 laptop and load it up with all of the free technology. We have a selection tree on ATSelect to help determine the primary device you should be getting, what’s the minimum thing I need to buy for my child so that they can feel successful in using the technology.

Question 9

It sounds like the cost barrier is getting lower all the time.

Answer

It really is. Five years ago, you were likely to spend at least $2,000 on a computer and another $1,500 on the software. So, we’ve seen a drastic change in the landscape. It’s really amazing where we’re at now in terms of price points.

Question 10

What are you seeing on the horizon in terms of assistive technology? What’s exciting you?

Answer

My goodness, all the cool stuff. I love my toys. My office is full of them. What’s really cool is seeing how the interfaces are beginning to change. We’re not going to be limited by the old keyboard/mouse interfaces. We’re definitely moving into the world of neuro-controlled interfaces, which is really, really exciting. But I think the more exciting thing is the push we’re making now at really helping educators and parents to understand how assistive technology fits into the learning landscape of their child. It doesn’t need to be this magical thing that’s happening, it’s just adding to what they’re already doing. So, if I have a profound learning challenge, it doesn’t disqualify me from being able to do the work that others are able to do because I now have these tools that allow me to get into the game.

Question 11

It’s all very encouraging.

Answer

It is. And our science is at a point where we can identify kids even in kindergarten who will benefit from this technology. We don’t have to wait until failure has set in for these students. It’s a great time to be in education because our research and our tools have gotten to a point where we to are able to help students who are struggling.

Question 12

You hit on something, that the technology is being employed before a point of failure by the student. That’s enormously important, I would think.

Answer

Yes, it’s huge.

Assistive Technology: Free and Affordable Help for Everyone

Built-In AT: Microsoft and Apple

What about Chrome?

And How About Phones and Tablets?

Free and Affordable AT: Apps and More

Screen Readers/Text-to-Speech

Screen Magnifiers

Object Recognition

Speech/Voice Recognition

Sound Amplifiers/Enhancement

Closed Captioning

Telephone Captioning

Cold Turkey Blocker Basic and Cold Turkey Writer Basic

Expert Perspective: Interview with Dr. Todd Cunningham