Disabilities Technology
Assistive / Adaptive Technologies for Students with DisabilitiesOverview
Whereas it's difficult enough for most students to get through grade school, graduate and then succeed in earning a college degree, for those students with a disability, the challenge can be compounded multifold. In the past, many such students found their disabilities to be nearly insurmountable obstacles to higher education. However, in recent years, tremendous advances in the area of adaptive / assistive technology have opened up new doors of opportunity. When matched with the appropriate technological accommodation, today's students with disabilities can often overcome longstanding obstacles to obtaining educational degrees.
My experience working as an adaptive technology specialist was among the most rewarding of my career, as these technologies can truly transform lives. Below are artifacts from various disability technology initiatives with which I've been involved.
Adaptive Technologies Presentation
Presented at the "Visions" Conference on Special Education in Jacksonville, FL
This presentation provides a really good overview of Adaptive / assistive technologies. This is in Portable Document Format.
View presentation (requires Flash)
View presentation (pdf)
Developing an Institutional Approach to Section 508 Accessibility for Online Courses
Section 508 of the United States Rehabilitation Act mandates that federal, state and local government organizations must make their informational content 
accessible to peoples with disabilities. This pertains to online courses as well as web sites, publications, and any audiovisual content. However, many government institutions, particularly state funded colleges, universities are K-12 school systems are often unaware of this requirement and/or lack the knowledge and resources to fulfill this obligation. This presentation, which I conducted at the Virtual School Symposium, offers guidelines for establishing an institutional approach to developing online courses that are compliant with Section 508/WCAG standards for Web accessibility.
View Presentation document (pdf)
Speech Recognition Captioning
This is presentation I gave at the League for Innovation in the Community College conference. It overviews a technique that I developed at Santa Fe College for accommodating the specialized needs of hearing-impaired students in the classroom. (this is a click thru PowerPoint presentation).
View Presentation (requires Flash)
Transitions to Higher Education
For students with disabilities, the move from high school to college is both critical and fraught with potential pitfalls that can undermine their academic goals. This presentation was created to provide students with disabilities with guidance on how to avoid these obstacles and make a successful transition into post-secondary education.
View Presentation document (pdf)