We All Have Special Needs
By Lucas, George; Edutopia ,Publication Date: February 2001
Article discusses the impact of assistive technology (AT) used to help students with disabilities to communicate with others, and to enrich the lives of other students and teachers in the process. When people with disabilities connect with AT, barriers can be broken. For example, when the author was filming the “Live and Learn” documentary, he met a girl with cerebral palsy in Fort Worth, Texas, who used voice recognition software to dictate feature articles for her school newspaper. The program eliminated the barrier posed by the need to coordinate the movement of her hands that is necessary to type on a keyboard. With the Internet, her stories could conceivably be read by people around the world. Examples are also presented in how interactive software programs can allow students with learning disabilities to read, and how closed-captioned television programming can help students to learn another language. The author hopes that one day, the classroom where students of varying abilities are working together will be the rule and not the exception.
Published by: George Lucas Educational Foundation (Website:http://www.edutopia.org)
Link to text: http://www.edutopia.org/php/article.php?id=Art_612
