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Teachers put a lot of time and effort into designing classroom activities that encourage students to read, write, communicate, play, move, and socialize. They strive to ensure that all students have opportunities to grow and learn, but children with disabilities can face barriers to their participation in classroom activities. To lower those barriers, teachers can access a set of tools鈥攃ollectively called assistive technology鈥攖hat have been designed to help these students participate fully and naturally in inclusive learning environments.

(AT) is 鈥渁ny 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.鈥� AT includes a wide variety of no-tech, low-tech, and high-tech tools. Some assistive technology tools cost nothing, and others can be fairly inexpensive. Many teachers are using some tools that function as AT鈥攅ven if they don鈥檛 think of them that way.

Simple Ways to Incorporate Assistive Technology

Closed-captioning in videos: Adding or turning on closed-captioning in all videos, including YouTube and GoNoodle, assists students in making connections between text and audio representations of language. Captioning is an assistive technology tool that is free and easy to use: simply push the CC button underneath a video.

Closed-captioning provides missing information for individuals who have difficulty processing speech and auditory components of visual media. It is crucial for students who are hard of hearing and .

Graphic organizers: Graphic organizers are a no-tech AT tool that offers a simple, effective way to provide writing support to elementary, middle, and high school students who have dysgraphia, executive function challenges, and other learning challenges.

Students with executive function聽challenges who struggle with organization, for example, can benefit from the visual organization of their thoughts and ideas, and 鈥渃larify implicit relationships contained in the text in a way that text alone may not.鈥� Likewise, students with 鈥攚hich affects handwriting and fine motor skills, word spacing, and the general ability to put ideas and thoughts onto paper鈥攃an benefit from graphic organizers.

This tool can help struggling writers show what they know and organize their thoughts before they start to write, which can make writing less intimidating. Having available in your classroom for all students is an easy way to provide an assistive technology tool to struggling writers of all ages.

Classroom seating: To help students focus their attention in order to learn, it鈥檚 helpful if teachers are able to provide a variety of seating options in the classroom. Examples of supported seating include聽beanbag chairs, yoga balls, wobble stools, carpet squares, and for active sitting, 鈥渟eating that naturally encourages us to stay in motion, rather than passively relaxing into a slouch or attempting to rigidly hold a 鈥榗orrect鈥� pose.鈥�

My daughter鈥檚 fifth-grade classroom has a variety of seating options, and one of her favorite seats looks like an old wooden train bench with pillows. Her third-grade classroom had a reading corner with beach chairs. Metal chairs arranged in rows don鈥檛 need to be the only seating choice in our classrooms, and involving students in the seating design process鈥攂y having them help arrange the room or develop the norms for using the options, for example鈥攃an create excitement and engagement.

Visual timers: Time can be abstract for students with executive function聽challenges or autism. Students may become anxious when a teacher says, 鈥淵ou have 10 minutes left to work on this test.鈥� Using a visual timer鈥攁 device that makes the concept of time easier to understand and monitor by providing a clear indication of the time remaining and elapsed for tasks鈥攃an help students and ease test anxiety as they are able to see at a glance how much time is left.

Teachers can place a physical visual timer on their desk or elsewhere at the front of the classroom, or project one on their interactive whiteboard during timed class activities, projects, or tests.

Speech-to-text software: Students with print disabilities such as dyslexia can struggle when producing written assignments. However, if your classroom uses Google Docs, all of your students鈥攖hose with and without disabilities鈥攈ave access to an important free tool called , which is found聽under the Tools tab. (Dragon Dictation and VoiceNote are similar tools that are also .)

Speech-to-text is a form of assistive technology that allows students鈥攁nd teachers鈥攖o dictate into their computer and watch their words appear as text on the computer screen, without typing. I鈥檝e found that students with and without disabilities like using this tool.

Teachers may want to create a space for voice typing in a corner of the classroom, where classroom sounds won鈥檛 be picked up by the computer microphone. If all students have the opportunity to rotate through this area, voice typing should not carry any stigma.