Technology's impact on Diverse Abilities

"The most striking finding of the national survey is the extent of peer-to-peer help amount people living with chronic conditions...One in four internet users living with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart conditions, lung conditions, cancer, or some other chronic ailment (23%) say they go online to find others with similar health concerns. By contrast 15% of internet users who report no chronic conditions have sough such help online." (Raine & Wellman, p.145)

When I made the switch to higher education my first job was an advisor in the Office for Students with Disabilities, and it was an enlightening experiencing that has stayed with me. Since then I've been able to remain a liaison to those offices at the different places I've worked and try to help support people with diverse abilities in their career development. So I couldn't blog through this whole course and not talk about the impact that technology and social media has had on this community.

The quote above is from our text, Networked, and demonstrates how social media has had an impact on people with disabilities, in this case looking particularly at chronic health conditions. You can see that people with these conditions are using social platforms to connect, potentially to feel less isolated or to learn from one another. For some people with sever chronic conditions, it may be that they would have a hard time leaving their house to interact with people; the internet and social platforms might provide them with the only way to maintain relationships.

Thinking about the classroom, whether K-12, postsecondary, or an organizational setting, you are going to continue to have learners with diverse abilities. Technology has made learning easier for people with disabilities, and there are so many new resources and often free and readily available materials that we can incorporate. Often times in schools the more expensive technology will be provided, such as screen reading or special note taking software, like smart pens or speech to text. This article gives a very broad overview of the different types of assistive technology you might see, anything from apps you might download to screen magnifying software to alternative keyboards: Assistive Technology for Education. It's a good place to start to familiarize yourself with what's out there.

Finally, Apple products are extremely accessible for people with diverse abilities. I encourage you all to visit Apple's iPhone Accessibility site and read about how you can set your phone to become accessible for vision, hearing, physical and motor, and learning and literacy. It is pretty incredible, and they are constantly adding new updates and features to make technology more accessible. The more technology can be accessible for everyone, I think the more reason we have to continue to use it for learning, and for many people with disabilities it is really making learning a lot easier.

Visit my Pinterest page for a few ideas on Assistive Technology and Universal Design! (Your views/comments/re-pins will help my knowledge share project!)