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The urgent issue most of the educational establishments encounter nowadays is the lack of assistive technology for students with certain kind of disability. It has become the main objective of educators to create conducive, equal conditions of studying for both disabled and non-disabled students. We are in need of assistive technologies which would improve academic results and promote effective learning.
Word Prediction and Kurzweil 3000
Both tools are oriented to help students cope with literacy. While Word Prediction is aimed at predicting grammatically correct forms of the word the user means to type, Kurzweil 3000 provides students who have non-print disability with picturing dictionary graphics, talking spell-checker, text magnification and other functions.
Screen Readers: Text-To-Speech Assistive Tool, Intel Reader, Word Talk, Supernova Access Suite
This software helps blind students who suffer from dyslexia or any other kind of visual impairment to comprehend texts with natural sounding speech. The tools above allow listening to the printed text, making pauses or even spelling out the highlighted words.
Sip-and-Puff Systems: Joise3 and Origin Instruments
Sip-and-Puff systems facilitate the disabled students’ learning process and allow them to click, type, push, touch and complete other actions with the help of their mouth, cheek, chin or tongue.
FaceMouse
While Sip-and-Puff systems are created for people with mobility challenges such as paralysis and fine motor skill difficulties, FaceMouse is aimed at students with limited mobility who can perform various actions with the help of face expressions and head movements.
Though there is a wide variety of assistive technologies for disabled students, it is not enough to supply everyone who is in need with a proper special education program. Let’s create and disseminate study resources, which would eliminate the border between disabled and non-disabled students together!
