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Assistive Technology: How Technology Can Help Your Child Be More Active
By Patti Slobogin, Ph.D.
Director, Lower Hudson Valley Regional Technology Center
Westchester Institute for Human Development
Assistive technology is any device that helps a person with a disability complete an everyday task. If you break your leg, a remote control for the TV can be assistive technology. If someone has poor eyesight, a pair of glasses or a magnifier is assistive technology.
Assistive technology includes many specialized devices as well, like typing telephones for people who are deaf and motorized wheelchairs for people who cannot walk. Assistive technology can be "low-tech" (something very simple and low-cost, like a pencil grip), or "high-tech" (something sophisticated, like a computer). Assistive technology can be critical for the person using it - if you wear glasses, think how hard it would be to get through the day without them!
The federal government recognized the importance of assistive technology for students when it revised the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1997. Since that time, federal law has said that school districts must consider assistive technology for any child in special education. That means that the educational team at your school must ask if there is a device that might help your child be more actively involved in a classroom activity. If the answer is yes, the school district must provide certain services:
- a qualified evaluator must complete an assistive technology evaluation;
- if the evaluator recommends a device, it must be acquired;
- and if you, your child or the staff in your child's school need training to use the device, that training must be provided, too.