On on a related topic, here at the High-tech Center Training Unit we have
had the opportunity over the years to provide specialized assisted computer
technologies to students with severe physical disabilities. Although there
is always the hope that one of these students will become the next Stephen
Hawkings, the reality is that students with disabilities as a population
demonstrate the same bell curve distribution of intelligence as any other
group.
What we have also seen, is that when students with disabilities do acquirer
access to appropriate technologies and are finally able to compete
successfully with their peers in classroom settings, we began to see the
effects of the kinds of educational disadvantagement that students with
disabilities have often been subject to in public education settings. Here
in the California community colleges, for example, it's not unusual to
discover that students with severe physical disabilities entering the
community college system from high school often have reading, writing, and
math skills at only a fourth to fifth grade level.
Prior to the arrival of NaturallySpeaking, for many of these students, even
with the best available assistive computer technologies, the process of
writing was so physically taxing and complex that they had little remaining
intellectual or physical resource available for the finer points of
grammar, syntax, construction and usage. It is our hope and expectation
that the ease of writing made possible through the use of NaturallySpeaking
will free up intellectual resources for improving writing skills.
Carl Brown, Director
High-tech Center Training Unit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 04 2000 - 12:43:34 EST