Assistive Technology is any device, piece of equipment, software program, or system that helps students accomplish two central goals:
- work around specific learning or physical challenges to meet expectations and deadlines
- access information, like curriculum content, in order to gain knowledge and improve skills
Is it necessary for some students?
YES! For some students Assistive Technology is necessary. Students with fine motor, attention, and learning differences–to name just a few factors that can impact how information is accessed and learning is expressed–can benefit from Assistive Technology. Have you heard of the term, “strengths based”? It means leveraging an individual’s strengths to support success. Challenges limit success by blocking strengths or making them incredibly hard to express. A student with rich vocabulary may tell wonderful stories, but if holding a pencil and printing are hard, what ends up on paper will be far less detailed than a spoken narrative. In this case, speaking into a computer that changes spoken words into typewritten text would be an excellent accommodation to support written composition skills.
So if the goal is to leverage strengths–an important goal for all of us at any age–then YES, Assistive Technology is necessary for students whose needs require it.
At Possibilities, we offer Assistive Technology Coaching to Ontario students in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary school up to 21 years of age. Please click here to learn more about our Assistive Technology Coaching.
