The Assistive Technology Blog

That's what the National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI) is telling us to do in their article "Be an Empowered Consumer: Let Your Voice Be Heard" available at
http://www.ldonline.org/article/16765

"Many AT developers and vendors are quite small companies, and most are led and staffed by people with a passion for improving the lives of individuals with disabilities. Consider them your partners in meeting AT needs. They are as interested in the performance of their products as those who buy and use them. There are several ways that technology development companies seek input from consumers, including involving select users in beta testing, talking to customers at trade shows, and capturing information shared with tech support staff with company engineers. What you may not know is how much companies truly value and rely on consumer input. This Info Brief provides information about how to be an empowered consumer to help shape the future of AT development. So make your needs known - request demo or review copies of products, call tech support, talk to vendors at trade shows in your area, and volunteer to be a beta tester."

Click on the link above to read the rest of the article.

Posted by Susanne Croasdaile at 5:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you missed the Summer issue of Remedial and Special Education, you may want to go back and glance at one of the articles...here's the abstract:

"Many individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have difficulty recognizing emotions in themselves and others. The present pilot study explored the use of assistive technology to teach emotion recognition (ER) to eight children with ASC. Participants were between the ages of 8 and 11 years and had a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome (AS). ER testing was conducted using a computer at pre- and postintervention. The intervention consisted of 10 weeks of using the computer software Mind Reading: The Interactive Guide to Emotions™ in either home or school settings. The results indicated that after intervention, participants improved on face and voice ER for basic and complex emotions that were in the software, as well as for complex voice ER for emotions not included in Mind Reading. The implications of these findings are discussed."

LaCava, P., Golan, O., Baron-Cohen, S., & Myles, B. S. (2007). Using assistive technology to teach emotion recognition to students with Asperger Syndrome. Remedial and Special Education, 28, 174-181.

Posted by Susanne Croasdaile at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www.onlineconferencingsystems.com/at.htm is one of the best AT website resources we have seen in a while. Why? I'll leave it to the website's creater to explain:

"Commercially-available assistive technology contributes, significantly, to enhancing the quality-of-life, independence and employability of millions of people with disabilities. Unfortunately, many individuals, social organizations, schools and government agencies can not afford to purchase it. Furthermore, there are many additional situations that preclude people with disabilities from accessing, using... or continuing to use commercial AT. For example, when K-12 schools purchase AT for use by their students... the schools own the AT. Often this situation precludes students with disabilities from being able to take the school's AT home with them to complete homework assignments... or to their local libraries to help them study and surf the web with their friends. When students graduate from high school they no longer have access to the AT that contributed to their success and independence as part of their K-12 education. The ability for high school students with disabilities to transition from high school to college, or into work environments, can also be negatively impacted. Free Assistive Technologies can help to mitigate these problems. It is this end that we dedicate and maintain this website."

If you know of an open source or otherwise free AT application that is not listed in their library, please let these folks know about it via e-mail. They would like to add it to this resource.

Posted by Susanne Croasdaile at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week I introduced free switch games for cause and effect available through Brillsoft. Check out this additional game for developing scanning skills.

Rockets! Is a single switch game which introduces the concept of scanning. That is you press the switch when the pointer is aligned with one of the buttons. You load rockets into a container, then press fire and watch the fireworks! It can also be used with a mouse, this is configured on the opening screen.

Download the game at the following web site.

http://www.brillsoft.com/Index_files/Page654.htm

Posted by Mona at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How many of you have students that are at the early stages of writing and struggle because they do not have the skills yet to write like their peers? Our students tend to avoid or give up any time a writing task is assigned. A great idea is to partner with a teacher of preschoolers or kindergartners and create big books for their classroom. Then your students could create books, using vocabulary they know and then volunteer in the classroom to read their book to the younger children. Everybody wins! Have you ever done this? What did you students think? Caroline Musselwhite has created a document to help explain why these opportunities are important and directions for creating a big book.
Check it out on her site under Tip from May 2003
http://www.aacintervention.com/tipthre.html#May%202003

Posted by Kelly Ligon at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Thursday, November 7, 2007, I was honored to be invited to the first national summit on discussing the current state and future direction of UDL in education. This event was hosted by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) and held in Washington, DC. A group of 50 individuals from across a variety of public, private, profit and non-profit sectors gathered to discuss these important issues and offer some guidance to CAST and others. Among several important announcements, CAST noted that they are venturing into work with both Google and Microsoft on new tools that will blend in UDL applications. Keep a watch on their website, http://www.cast.org, for more information from this meeting and new advances in the news around UDL!

Posted by Fran Smith at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dredging up some old web articles the other day found this gem, "Fueling the Creation of New Electronic Curbcuts."

An excerpt:

Television (TV) manufacturers in the U.S. will tell you that their caption decoders for the deaf wound up benefiting tens-of-millions more consumers than originally intended. As the electronic curb cut effect has shown in the past, televisions with decoders are simply better than those without. For example, captioning can enable TV viewers to:
-search for and retrieve video content, by word, through the use of multimedia databases;
-listen to programs in silence while someone is sleeping;
-listen to programs in noisy environments like sports bars;
-watch their favorite program while talking on the telephone, without appearing rude to the person being spoken to;
-read more effectively, and at an earlier age, by enabling them to see the words being spoken at the same time they hear them (i.e. Sesame Street);
-Learn to read/speak a second language by displaying foreign words at the same time they are being spoken; and,
-Understand foreign programming through the use of native language captions.

What follows is a listing of IT innovations, originally developed by, or in support of, people with disabilities that wound up benefiting everyone.

Posted by Susanne Croasdaile at 4:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fab Four consists of 4 single switch games for users with special needs. These are cause and effect games for users with special needs. Download it to try! After all it is completely free, however if you are able, a donation to keep the website running would be appreciated. I particularly enjoyed the pinball game!!

http://www.brillsoft.com/Index_files/Page603.htm

Posted by Mona at 6:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When we are working with children who use augmentative communication systems, many of us struggle with what to put on the device. If you only had 8 things to access at a time, what would be most critical? Test it for yourself. Use only 8 words or short phrases to communicate with others throughout the day. Is it possible? Did you have to sit and listen a lot or use gestures to get more specific information across? I bet it was frustrating! Caroline Musselwhite’s Tip for November 2007 on her site http://www.aacintervention.com has a book to down load comes from Jane Odom, PRC consultant in Phoenix, and an amazing group of people who use AAC devices, who worked to share tips to younger AAC users. When talking about what would have been useful for them to learn during their many years of therapy, this book offers a range of sample messages, often in form of a social script, for a variety of community situations. These messages were created by AAC users themselves, which is much more beneficial than teacher created scripts.

Posted by Kelly Ligon at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google's search engine offers some great services that, not only help folks browse the web, but also assist those with disabilities. For example,

the calendar provides a speech-friendly interface
the GMail email service offers a simple html interface that works well with many screen readers
the sign-in captcha service provides an audio alternative

For more information, visit,

http://labs.google.com/accessible/
http://www.accessibilityblog.com/2006/04/11/google-releases-audio-captcha/

Posted by Fran Smith at 5:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A new Tech Matrix through the National Center on Technology Innovation is available at http://www.techmatrix.org/. Users simply type in the search subject area (such as assistive technology) and the area of suppport (such as access to multiple formats) and a matrix is generated -- cross referencing several tools and numerous features. A wonderful resource!

Posted by Fran Smith at 4:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The National Center for Technology Innovation has an interesting story in its headlines regarding the new alliance of AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. These companies are working together to "increase the amount of online video accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing". To read more, visit http://www.nationaltechcenter.org/index.php/2007/1e-online-media-captioning/0/27/aol-google-microsoft-yahoo-unite-to-advanc

Posted by Fran Smith at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Big Calculator is a large calculator for Windows produced by Sensory Software. You can either click on the buttons with the mouse or use the numeric keypad to perform calculations. The size of the calculator buttons is determined by the width of the calculator window thus making it easy to adjust the size of the calculator. In addition, verbal feedback is given if SAPI 4.0 speech is installed on your computer. To download and read more go to:

http://www.sensorysoftware.com/bigcalculator.html

Posted by Mona at 6:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Caroline Musselwhite, nationally renowned AT specialist, was in Richmond last week at the 10th annual TechKnowledgy conference. She shared with the audience a lot of wonderful information and ideas for working with students who are emergent readers and writers. She quoted research that says the good first grade teachers, who have successful readers, include a classroom with over 1500 books that can be read by students. I can’t imagine 1500 books in a classroom…how much would that cost? How is that possible? Well, she shared wonderful ideas such as: purchasing books at yard sales; used bookstores; ask for donations from the community; AND making your own books. This is where the calendars come in! Before winter break, make an announcement or put a box in the teachers lounge to collect all of the old calendars from your colleagues. Using the pictures you can add text/caption that applies to the photo and create a story. Who knows how many you could create! Involve your students, get them to contribute to calendar, either by filling in one word or writing short phrases…the possibilities are endless! And you could have 25 or 30 books that your students will really enjoy!

Posted by Kelly Ligon at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mary Wilds and members of the VDOE AT statewide Priority Project met with members of AT teams throughout Virginia to discuss several online tools to support their work, planning, and discussions. Mary shared a new online Blackboard course area that teams will use and explore through George Mason University and the TTAC Online (http://ttaconline.org) affiliation. Ongoing dialogue will continue until teams gather again during the upcoming 2008 Virginia Society for Technology in Education (http://www.vste.org) conference in February.

In addition, Dr. Daniel Arkin with VSTE, shared a few new resources for AT practitioners in Virginia including the new AT Rocks in Virginia social networking area at http://vsteonline.ning.com/group/at. Dr. Arkin encouraged participants to begin using some of the new e-resources that are now available through the VSTE organization and a new professional learning community for AT.

Posted by Fran Smith at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Assistive technology consultant and trainer, Mr. Dan Herlihy provided numerous tips and tricks at his session on "Creating Writing Adventures for Students" and "Creating Accessible Quizzes" at the 2007 TechKnowledgy Conference. Dan offered numerous insights into how to quickly customize functionality across programs such as Clicker 5, PowerPoint, Classroom Suite, and Kurzweil Scan and Read 3000.
For many seasoned AT users, this presentation offered some new insights into how speech, embedded text tips, and automated study aids can support all students through assistive technologies.

Posted by Fran Smith at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mr. Dan Keplinger--noted artist, painter, and writer--kicked off the opening day of the conference with a discussion/ sharing of his remarkable story. Co-narrated with his fiancee, Mr. Keplinger provided a discussion of how his life evolved, the barriers he faced, and the triumphs of his success.
At the conclusion of the day, he shared his Academy Award-winning documentary, King Gimp, which follows Dan's life as he discovers his voice through art. A truly remarkable person and advocate for individuals living with disabilities. Tune in again for future audio footage of his presentations!!

Posted by Fran Smith at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We hope that you were able to join us for TechKnowledgy 2007 this week!
Dan Herlihy, one of Tuesday's featured presenters, discussed software and hardware that was traditionally viewed for special needs students and explore how it can be utilized to create seamless solutions for assessing what all of your students have learned, as well as be accessible by all students. He has a website http://www.connectivetechnologysolutions.com/resources.php that includes some demos, handouts, and other resources from the myriad references he makes during his presentations. Click on his site to check them out...

Posted by Susanne Croasdaile at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the website http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/voting:
What if you wanted to vote but the polling place was locked? For many of the 33.7 million Americans with disabilities of voting age, this situation is all too real. Not because polling officials are deliberately blocking disabled people from entering, but because so many polling places are inaccessible. In fact, the Federal Election Commission reports that, in violation of state and federal laws, more than 20,000 polling places across the nation are inaccessible, depriving people with disabilities of their fundamental right to vote. This despite state and federal laws - including the Americans With Disabilities Act - which require polling places to accommodate disabled voters. Click http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/voting to read more.

Posted by Susanne Croasdaile at 4:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to hear more about some emerging Web 2.0 technologies? How these are very popular among the younger "digital native" students? How assistive technologies can be accessed through these tools? Tune in for a future webinar by AT experts, Kirk Behnke and Scott Marfilius.

Teaching Digital Natives - Technology Tools for the Classroom
http://www.fctd.info/webboard/index.php
November 1 - 30, 2007

Posted by Fran Smith at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The two-day TechKnowledgy 2007 begins today with a keynote address from Dan Keplinger, an accomplished artist, writer, and subject of the Oscar winning HBO documentary, “King Gimp” http://www.hbo.com/kinggimp/king/. He is talking with the audience about his educational and life experiences growing up with cerebral palsy. Dan shares on his website, “Obstacles and challenges are a universal part of the human condition. We all face them in everyday life, however we also have a choice as to how we deal with them.” (http://www.kinggimp.com) Dan's message benefits parents, teachers and individuals serving students with disabilities. We hope to see you with us today and tomorrow!

Posted by Susanne Croasdaile at 4:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's an interesting piece written for Apple about a young man who's limitations were overcome through the power of distance technologies.
http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/belaire/?sr=hotnews?sr=hotnews.rss

Posted by Fran Smith at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The related services support of the all important occupational therapist practitioner cannot be stated enough! This month's issue of the Family Center on Technology and Disability dedicates the entire discussion to this important team member. For more information, visit http://www.fctd.info/resources/newsletters/index.php

Posted by Fran Smith at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)