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April 18, 2005
Ricky Lee, NC State Disabilities Services for Students, Coordinator of Assistive Technology
Email: ricky_lee at ncsu.edu
Voice: 919-513-3556
Information on assistive technology at NC State.
The term "assistive technology", as defined in the Assistive Technology Act of 1998, means "any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities."
Assistive technology helps the environment for everyone – elevator, computer, voice reading, tornado warnings, and so on.
Web sites need to be made accessible, so that they will work with assistive technology. Make sure Web sites can be read by screen readers, captioning, transcripts, Alt tags on images, etc. There are sets of standards that everyone can follow:
Some people will make a text only Web page as an alternative, but it does not work well since people tend to update their main Web page and forget to update the text version. Good to use dynamic fonts so that the size of the font can be changed and still wrap properly in the Web page.
Can quickly check your Web pages in WAVE.
Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access
Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office
PDF documents are not always accessible. They need OCR plugins. In your Word software, you probably have a way to make a pdf that is accessible. Not good to use the space bar for formatting. You should use 2-column settings for 2 columns, or insert a table when you need a table.
There are special printers which will teach Braille and also graphics using raised dots to convey content. Also available with ink for color (Braille embossers). Tactile diagrams might help all students understand, not just vision-impaired. The company ViewPlus offers develops such products developing technology for people with disabilities.
There are also 3D printers which would help make models of 3D figures so students could understand more fully.
A Portable Braille reader can be carried by the user. These readers will output either in audio or print Braille. A single page of text can be 3-5 pages in Braille, though this can be shortened by using contracted Braille which uses abbreviations. These are used often in rehab also.
Portable Closed-Circuit TV (CCTV) helps you read books, allows you to do it anywhere instead of having to go to a library that has the equipment.
Aids for people who are hearing impaired. Can use personal listening devices. Personal devices need to be able to be hooked to classroom PA system. Ricky showed us Easy Listening.
Google has an online service to search for video. It will be able to search sections of video that are captioned to find specific section. Need videos to be captioned, can hire a court stenographer, or use a person to respeak what professor on video is saying into voice recognition software. Will cost about $125 for 60 minutes of video. QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player all have ability to display closed-captioning.
National Center for Accessible Media
Make MAGpie software for adding captioning to video (Media Access Generator).
Programs such as ZoomText and MAGic magnify the screen for people. JAWS and Kurzweil 1000 is software to that reads the computer screen to a person.
Some people cannot use a mouse so they will use the keyboard to navigate. Some people need to use an onscreen virtual keyboard.
There are also tools for completely hands-free computer access.
Laws covering students are different between K-12 and college. College students have to self-advocate. NC State runs a summer program to help students with transition.
See the NCSU Assistive Technology site for the software programs available for students to use. In the Learning Resources Library (Poe 400) we also have Kurzweil, JAWS, assistive scanner, and Braille printer available for students to use. These can be used for demo for teacher education students also.
Other resources: