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T E C H N O LO GY I N T E G R AT I O N
Assistive Technology for Young Children in
Special Education: It Makes a Difference
A discussion on the many types of assistive technology
tools that are available for children with disabilities.
By Michael Behrmann
May 1, 1998
Technology can level the playing field for students with mobility, hearing, or vision
impairments.
Credit: IntelliTools, Inc.
Technology has opened many educational doors to children, particularly to children with
disabilities. Alternative solutions from the world of technology are accommodating
physical, sensory, or cognitive impairments in many ways.
Much of the technology we see daily was developed initially to assist persons with
disabilities. Curb cuts at streetcorners and curb slopes, originally designed to
accommodate people with orthopedic disabilities, are used more frequently by families
with strollers or individuals with grocery carts than by persons with wheelchairs or
walkers. The optical character reader, developed to assist individuals unable to read
written text, has been adapted in the workplace to scan printed documents into
computer-based editable material, saving enormous amounts of data entry labor.
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Children with disabilities often feel better about themselves as a result of using
technology.
Credit: IntelliTools, Inc.
Technology -- an Equalizer
Technology can be a great equalizer for individuals with disabilities that might prevent
full participation in school, work, and the community. This is most evident in the case of
individuals with mobility, hearing, or vision impairments, but is also true for individuals
with limitations in cognition and perception. With technology, an individual physically
unable to speak can communicate with spoken language. Using a portable voice
synthesizer, a student can ask and respond to questions in the "regular" classroom,
overcoming a physical obstacle that may have forced placement in a special
segregated classroom or required a full-time instructional aide or interpreter to provide
"a voice."
Improvements in sensor controls enable subtle motor movements to control mobility
devices, such as electric wheelchairs, providing independent movement through the
school and community. Text and graphics enhancement software can enlarge sections
of a monitor enough to be seen by persons with vision impairments. Text can be read
electronically by a digitized voice synthesizer for a person who is blind. For persons
with hearing impairments, amplification devices can filter extraneous noise from the
background or pick up an FM signal from a microphone on a teacher's lapel.
Word processing, editing, spellchecking, and grammatical tools commonly found in
high-end software facilitate the inclusion of students with learning disabilities in regular
classrooms by allowing them to keep up with much of the work. Not inconsequentially,
the children often feel better about themselves as active learners.
Technology is providing more powerful and efficient tools to teachers who work with
children with disabilities. These tools enable teachers to offer new and more effective
means of learning while individualizing instruction to the broad range of student
learning needs. Educators are using computers as tools to deliver and facilitate
learning beyond drill and practice, to provide environments that accommodate learning,
and to ensure enhanced and equitable learning environments to all students.
Access to the World Wide Web, email, listservs, and other electronic learning
environments is common in many classrooms. In these environments, students around
the world can interact in real time via onscreen messaging or video and audio
transmissions. In most of these learning situations, a disability makes no difference at
all.
The range of potential assistive technology devices is large and includes both high-tech
devices like computers and low-tech, manually operated devices.
Credit: IntelliTools, Inc
Assistive Technology Defined
The definition of assistive technology applied to education is extremely broad,
encompassing "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 functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities."
As a result, the potential range of AT devices is incredibly large, and both "high-tech"
and "low-tech" devices are included. High-tech devices may be computers, electronic
equipment, or software. Although electronically operated, high-tech devices need not
be expensive, a simple low-cost switch that controls a battery-operated toy can be
considered a high-tech device, as can a tape recorder. Low-tech devices are manually,
not electronically, operated. This group includes devices such as pencil grips, mouth
sticks, and mechanical hoists.
This definition also expands the consideration of potential educational applications with
its focus on devices "used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities
of persons with disabilities." As educators, we try to increase or add new academic,
social, and daily living skills and knowledge to the functional capability of all children.
This is a basic goal as we prepare children to take their place in society.
In the case of children with degenerative impairments, such as muscular dystrophy,
educators may be working to keep children functioning at their current level. They may
be striving to help students maintain their capability to function in the world. Teachers
work with students to improve skills and knowledge, making existing skills and
knowledge even more functional and improving fluency so that functional capabilities
may be generalized into different settings.
It is critical to understand the implications of this definition to comprehend its effect on
children with disabilities in our schools. It is fairly easy to understand how the definition
is applied with regard to children with physical or sensory disabilities. To see a young
child who had been unable to speak for her first five years say her first sentence with a
speaking computer device presents an exciting and clear picture of assistive
technology. The benefit of AT is also easy to comprehend when a child who cannot hear
can understand his teacher's directions because real-time captioning converts the
teacher's speech to text projected onto his laptop computer.
The definition of assistive technology also applies to the more difficult-to-gauge tools
that teachers use to deliver and facilitate learning, including instructional applications
of technology. These applications range from drill and practice tutorials to facilitated
learner-based environments provided through the Internet or interactive hypermedia
and multimedia-based instruction.
It is important to understand that virtually all applications of technology -- tools for
children to learn, as well as tools for teachers to provide learning opportunities -- can
be defined as assistive technology. This is true for individual children with disabilities
whose disability has a primary impact on academic performance (e.g., learning
disabilities) or functional performance (e.g., multiple physical and visual disabilities).
Legal and Moral Requirements
The mandate to provide assistive technology to children with special needs is grounded
in the moral concerns protected by the U.S. Constitution and its amendments. The
Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94-142) was based on the Supreme
Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that separate education was not
equal education under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. At the time the law was
passed by Congress in 1975, nearly 2 million children were excluded from schools in
the United States. With the legislation, the president and the Congress established a
legal requirement for a "free appropriate public education in the least restrictive
environment" for children with disabilities and, as a result, the field of special education
began to flourish for the first time in nearly seventy-five years.
Many controversies surfaced, however, about the extent of the required educational
services and the cost to society for those services. The major debates have focused on
the need for a clear definition of an "appropriate" education in the least restrictive
environment and the requirement to provide assistive technology devices and services
to all individuals with disabilities.
'Appropriate' Education
The requirement for an "appropriate" education in the least restrictive environment has
led to the development of a separate educational system designed to meet the needs of
children with disabilities. Some educators contend that this is the same type of
separate system that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in 1954. These
individuals suggest that all children, regardless of ability, should be educated with their
neighborhood peers in their local school.
Others in favor of the special education system argue that it is necessary to meet the
educational needs of all children with disabilities, particularly in the "continuum of
services" mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA)
(http://www.nichcy.org/idea.htm) . In their view, children must have specific intervention
designed to "mainstream" them back into regular education. Without the intervention,
these individuals believe that students will be doomed to continued and more
significant failure. They also note that, while the goal of mainstreaming is reasonable,
some children may not benefit appropriately from a full inclusion program.
Although there are many arguments on both sides of the issue, it is apparent that new
technologies can provide the tools to bring more children with disabilities into "regular"
educational settings. In my opinion, assistive technology will certainly mainstream more
and more children in wheelchairs, children who cannot physically speak, see, or hear,
and children who need computers to write, organize, think, and function educationally.
The AT Requirement
The second debate centers on the requirement to provide assistive technology to all
students. The initial legislation, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, did not
require schools to provide assistive technology devices and services to individuals with
disabilities. The current assistive technology mandate was created by later legislation
and prompted by the technological revolution resulting from the development of the
microcomputer.
Subsequent legislation passed by Congress encouraged states to develop services
designed to provide assistive technology to all persons with disabilities and required
provision of AT as a special education service (trained special education teachers in
special classes), related service (occupational, physical, speech therapies, and other
services needed to access education) or supplemental service (services necessary to
maintain a child in regular education classes).
Many states have not addressed the AT issue, since assistive technology devices and
services were identified as requirements only recently. This may be due to a fear of
"breaking" instructional budgets by purchasing high-cost equipment in already cash-
short school systems. Concern also exists that the rapid evolution of technology
creates the potential of costly investment in devices that may have a relatively short
life span.
A close look at the situation will show that these concerns are not well grounded,
however. Schools already use extensive amounts of AT, and need only to identify it as
such. Nearly any use of computers falls into this category, as do tape recorded
instructions or homework, copies of notes from a classmate or teacher, switch-operated
toys, drawing paper taped to table tops, as well as large pencils and crayons. All of
these could be noted, as required, in Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and Individual
Family Service Plans (IFSPs).
MICHAEL BEHRMANN IS PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION AND DIRECTOR
OF THE HELEN A. KELLAR CENTER FOR HUMAN DISABILITIES AT
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY IN FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA.
THIS ARTICLE IS EXCERPTED FROM ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY FOR
YOUNG CHILDREN IN SPECIAL EDUCATION, BY MICHAEL BEHRMANN,
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA: ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT. COPYRIGHT 1998 ASCD. REPRINTED BY
PERMISSION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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