As more kids with disabilities join different school districts, more resources are needed, and amongst those resources is adaptable technology, which gives disabled kids the opportunity to learn.
“Adaptive technology is very important because if we have good adaptive technology, people can use that adaptive technology to go to school, go to college, get a job, or do whatever they want to do with their lives,” sophomore Luke McKeon said.
Kids with disabilities can join clubs, learn the same materials as everyone else, and branch out and try new things all because of the new technology that is being created.
“We have an obligation to provide those materials because every person has a right to that access to the learning material recreation opportunities, theater group, chess club, you know, whatever it is,” teacher for the visually impaired (TVI) Kevin Hollinger said.
Everyone uses different technology for different tasks.
Sophomore Olivia Damschroder said that because of her disability, she uses grips on her pencils to help her handwriting to be smaller.
Although some technology is different from other people’s technology, there is also some technology that is the exact same, but just with some different features.
“Probably my adaptable laptop with JAWS. So basically, it allows me to access everything like the sighted kids would access, but it talks and it helps me to display Braille, and I can do everything in school that I could want or need to do,” McKeon said.
Even jobs are going out of their way to create technology that helps people with disabilities.
“So our school district does a lot because any presentation that’s given with the Board of Education, or anybody else, we make sure that closed captioning is available because we have not only students that have a hearing impairment. We have staff members that have a hearing impairment, and we have a lot of parents who have a hearing impairment,” Hollinger said.
In addition, AI is also a big help when it comes to making tasks adaptable.
“And then, really, right now there’s a lot of the use of AI to use for identifying environments where the phone would give them information of what is in the room or what’s outside that they are not able to see,” orientation and mobility (O and M) specialist Jared Genenbacher said.