On Monday the class was fortunate to have another guest speaker, Tracy Humphreys. She introduced the BCEdAccess society. This is an organization run by a group of volunteers, and their goal is to use technology to help students with learning disabilities. What stood out to me was the ways children and youth are excluded. Many students are excluded from activities because there is no EA, not enough funding, or the course material does not suit their needs. We were shown a video of a young learner who has autism and is a non-reliable speaker, meaning he does not always mean what he says. Throughout his younger years he was quiet and did not speak; however, when he entered High school he started spelling out his thoughts, allowing him to express his words in a more thought out approach. The video we were shown on Monday shows the learner using an IPad to construct a sentence. This shows that even providing students with a little bit of accessibility can help them thrive.
Accessibility looks like providing students with the resources they need to reach their goals. Children are excluded in a number of ways; therefore, having alternative methods for students to learn is very beneficial. The videos I watched outside of the class mentioned the use of “Speech to Text”, “Read and Write”, “Bookshare”, and “Grammarly” as sources for students to use. “Speech to Text” is an application used on google docs that allows someone who has difficulty writing their thoughts to speak them instead. “Read and Write” is a program that reads words or paragraphs aloud and it is used for students who struggle with reading. “Bookshare”’ is a website with close to 1 million books and it changes text to speech for students that are visually impaired. The final program discussed was “Grammarly”. This corrects students’ writing to make it more concise and flow easier. Overall, all of these resources help make the classroom more accessible to students.