Blog Post 15

By Linda Check and Meagan Freeman

         This week we were asked what assistive technologies are available to us as teachers? As a hopeful special education teacher, we have learned about several technologies available to us throughout this semester, but this week we learned about a few more by watching a few different videos. The videos we watched were iPad usage for the blind, Assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impaired Children, and Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad. Two of these videos covered VoiceOver for the iPad. This technology also people who are blind to navigate around the iPad very easily. The person simply has to slide there finger over the iPad and VoiceOver will tell which app you are on. VoiceOver will then tell you to double tap your finger to open the app. It was fun watching the mom figure out the iPad and learning what her deaf/blind child already knows in Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad. In iPad usage for the blind, it was also amazing to watch Wesley Majerus, an Access Technology Specialist for the National Federation for the Blind, work the VoiceOver on the iPad. We learned, through Wesley, that iBooks on the iPad has read aloud textbooks, something that Nook and Kindle does not have. Wesley said it was very liberating to be able to search and read books of his choice.

         Assistive technologies are going to be a huge part of our day-to-day routine, as special education teachers. Every person deserves to be included in the lesson and able to interact with the environment around him or her. We as teachers need to remove as many barriers as possible in the classroom. We need to be open to new technologies that help all the students with special needs!