How does Assistive technology help students to bypass their disability?
Assistive technology helps students to cope with many types of disabilities like cognitive difficulties, physical impairment, etc.
With assistive technology, students can improve their learning skills and achieve greater success in life.
What is assistive technology?
Assistive technology for kids with learning disability is defined as any device, system or tool that aids to facilitate their specific learning deficits.
However, it cannot eradicate the disabilities completely but it can potentially help the children in reducing their problems.
It can improve your child's self-reliance, and without any human aid, he/she can perform learning activities.
What are the different types of learning problems AT address?
AT refers to a variety of learning disabilities. If students are having problems performing normal activities that others naturally do, it might be a sign of LD (Learning Disability).
Similarly, students with dyslexia can also get benefits from assistive technology.
Listening
If students find difficulty to remember the spoken language, advanced AT tools can help them.
These tools can be installed in various settings and help to compensate for their disabilities.
Maths
Many students struggle to understand math problems like computing, organizing, aligning.
Assistive technology tools support the students with advanced setup which helps to calculate serious maths problems.
Organization and memory
Assistive technology helps students to organize, plan and keep track of important notes.
With advanced tools, students can manage, retrieve, and create a memorandum of information.
Reading
Many students find it difficult to read and understand the difference in spelling, grammar, words, etc.
There are a variety of tools available for the disabled children who can ease their reading struggle.
Writing
There are numerous assistive technology tools for impaired students with writing.
This tool helps the students to maintain proper spelling, punctuation, grammar and other important factors of writing.
Different types of assistive technology tools
- Abbreviation expander
- Alternative keyboards
- Electronic math worksheets
- Freeform database software
- Graphic organizers and outlining
- Information/data managers
- Optical character recognition
- Personal FM listening systems
- Portable word processors
- Proofreading programs
- Speech-recognition programs
- Speech synthesizers readers
- Talking calculators
- Electronic spell checkers
- Variable-speed tape recorders
- Word-prediction programs
Other advanced technology tools for learning
Apart from these tools, there are other forms of technologies specifically for the students to help them fight against learning disabilities.
With these technologies, students can improve their performance in the academic sphere and can have a bright future.
Instructional software: It is used to provide specific academic skills. It is somewhat different from AT as it doesn't bypass the difficulties.
Universal design for learning: It includes different learning models, products, and processes to guide the students with the right path of education or learning.
UDL can be customized as per the educational material of the students and helps to bypass their disabilities with the general curriculum.
