How do special education students benefit from technology

Students with autism, cerebral palsy, speech delays, and down syndrome have found innovative ways to express themselves; thanks to the technological advancement. Technology is utilized more in a special-education class, than in any other regular classroom setting, since all the diverse students and their learning requirements that need to be met so as to make edification successful for them. Most of the time people think that any kind of disorder is a mental illness, but it is a false notion.

According to the psychologists near about 51% students (age 6-17) have specific learning disabilities. Most of the time they couldn’t rectify this kind of problems. Among them, 21% of students have speech or language impairments, whereas 8% students have emotional disorders. Only 8% students have serious disabilities, such as orthopedic impairments, multiple disabilities, autism, or traumatic brain injury. But those students can grow as rapidly as any other students. All they need is a bit of learning aids and technology provides them exactly what they want.

For learners with little cognitive disabilities in reading, can use text-to-speech products, reading skill software, interactive storybooks, etc. For those with mild disabilities in writing, can use word prediction software and voice recognition. For the students with mild disabilities in maths, can also find a good result in using graphing software, games, drills and tutorials.

 There are some students, who have moderate to severe cognitive disabilities, for them, software aids teach and reinforce useful skills such as daily living, money-management, etc., videos enhance acquisition, transfer of useful and community-based behaviors and maintenance.

For learners with physical disabilities may use alternative methods of accessing keyboard, monitor and mouse. Settle on the best placement of adaptive technology and teach the learners so they are allowed to access it independently. Monitor to make sure that the highest level of involvement is obtained with no undue physical demands.

For learners with sensory disabilities like blindness, have extensive options to use canes and sensor technologies to understand movement, screen readers and text-to-braille converters. For visually challenged learners, may use built-in computer screen magnification control panels and Closed-Circuit Television magnification systems. For hearing impaired learners, assistive listening devices such as FM amplification systems are the best option.

Though there are still challenges and problems, the positives undeniably outweigh the difficulties, giving learners access and use of technical devices, just as the students in a regular classroom. Technology enhances their independence of reading, writing and learning, teaching them the basic communication skills that they are going to need for the rest of their career and beyond. Above all, the technology brings back the hope to include them in mainstream, ravelling the chunk opportunities in front of them.