Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Assistive technology: Helping people with disabilities achieve their goals

Assistive technology: Helping people with disabilities achieve their goals
The video “Enabling Dreams” shows the different ways assistive technology can help people with disabilities learn, move, play music and do other things that able-bodied individuals can do.
As I was watching, it left me feeling amazed and enlightened.
With the availability of many assistive technology products, as shown in the video, I’ve come to realize that young kids who have physical, mental or other impairments do not have to feel left behind.
Students with disabilities can now participate in classroom learning almost like normal kids with the help of such technological aids as touch-screen computers, voice-activated computers and even computers that help severely handicapped kids use computers that respond to commands using the movement of eyebrows.
With assistive technology, the U.S. No Child Left Behind law, to me, has more meaning because even the students with disabilities will have similar opportunities to learn and participate in class.
Assistive technology was first defined in the Technology-Related Assistance under the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1988, according to the Website www./psb.org.speced/Assistive%20technology /Intro%20page.htm.
The video also showed that even outside the classrooms, students with disabilities also can interact and do things normal people do with the help of advances in assistive technology equipment, gadgets and other products.
For example, a man who couldn’t fully move his arms and hands still was able to participate in a band.
Playing a musical horn is difficult enough for some people who have no disabilities, but the handicapped man in the video was able to follow his musical dreams because assistive technology allows him to do what his physical limitations would normally not make it possible.


The only thing that made me concerned after I watched the video was this: Using assistive technology in Guam classrooms will really help, but at the same time, many in Guam know that public schools don’t have the money for these things, and many parents cannot afford assistive technology equipment if they have to buy it on their own.
So without local money available, the hope for Guam kids is for federal money to be given to public schools for assistive technology.
Even when assistive technology has made many new equipment for people with disabilities, if funding will not be enough, then the dreams of kids with disabilities to interact and learn better in the classrooms will continue to be out of reach.