The Future of Assistive Technology

There has been a dramatic evolution in assistive technology for people with disabilities over the last 100 years, and the pace of change indicates that there will be amazing advances in the coming decades as well.  In education, these developments have open up new possibilities for every type of student, opening up education to those that were formerly considered "unteachable" and leading to technologies that improved education as a whole.

Some of these technologies, once considered revolutionary, we now consider commonplace - hearing aids, braille, and electric wheelchairs come to mind.  These were developed in the first half of the twentieth century, but since 1950 the advances in computer technology have opened up a new world.  Yet, text-to-speech software has existed since the late 1960s (Kurzweil Educational Systems is nearly 20 years old), computers have first started to appear in classrooms more than 30 years ago, and even Smart Boards first debuted in the early 1990s.  Although these tools were adopted at relatively slow rates and varied wildly from school to school and district to district, all of them are relatively commonplace in education today.

Thus, the question facing educators today is how to find and embrace the next wave of technology, both for assistive purposes and for education as a whole.  In the last five years, a combination of processing power (and chip size) and touch screen technology has led to the debuts of products like the SMART Table and iPad.  These seem to be the greatest indicators of where educational technology is going.  One can actually now envision future scenarios where every student desk has built in touch-screen computing, with the ability to send student work to the class SMART Board or Table with the swipe of a finger.

While many of these advances will inevitably lead to flashy usage that lacks depth or purpose, providing little added value, properly trained and supported teachers will be able to make incredible use of these tools.  Struggling readers will be able to plug their headphones into their desks for instant text-to-speech conversion.  Students who need teacher assistance will be able to activate a flashing light on their desktop or ping the teacher's tablet, eliminating the need to keep a hand raised and making it easier for self-conscious students to ask for help.

The possibilities really seem limitless at this point, but teachers (and districts) will need guidance.  Luckily, districts such as Montgomery County (MD) have offices like High Incidence Accessible Technology (HIAT), which support teachers in locating and implementing appropriate technologies to meet students' needs.  The Assistive Technology Specialists in departments like this one will be key players in the way these new technologies shape the future of education, and hopefully other districts will follow this model and teachers will become aware of the existence and benefits of such experts.