Accessibility is a very important area for all schools no matter how big or small. This is something that we should all have in mind when creating lessons and activities for our students. Luckily something that most people now have, mobile devices, are very diverse when it comes to accessibility features. IOS, which is Apple’s mobile operating system has features to overcome several disabilities some students are faced with today.
Students with physical and sensory disabilities such as blindness or the inability to write can benefits from Apple’s Speech to text and text to speech features. Students with vision issues can select a block of text and have their device read it back to them. The opposite feature, speech to text, can help students with the inability to physically be able to type or write. Just by using an app called Dictation they can speak into their microphone and have the text displayed on their devices (Understood Team 2018). Since I am not a teacher and not directly involved with any students that have disabilities at my institution, I do have a friend who broke his neck many years going and as a result he is in a wheelchair. He will never be able to walk again and has lost use of a lot of functionality with his hands. Since he has technologies available to him he is able to successfully coach a softball team. He uses the iPad to regularly communicate with the team and organize practices.
This is just a small example of how mobile technologies can help with disabilities there’s a greater wide range of technologies out there to help match a lot of student’s needs. With all of the assistive technologies that are offered today, it has opened the door for students that would normally not have these opportunities. Since technology is always growing and always changing we can only expect these technologies to improve and new inventive ways will be developed to assist these students.
Understood Team. (n.d.). Assistive Technology That’s Built Into Mobile Devices. Retrieved from https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/assistive-technology/assistive-technologies-basics/assistive-technology-thats-built-into-mobile-devices
