Transcript
One of the problems with recommending a program is a program is made up of a whole bunch of tools. So when I talk about assistive technology tools, I'm talking about very specific functions that are often embedded in a program and a program might have many different tools or functions in them. For example, I'm sure everybody knows Microsoft Word, one of the most common word processors out there.
When we talk about assistive technology programs and products, often what we're doing is prescribing a program to a student and then teaching the student all 70 or 90 different tools or functions in that program when really that student might only need two or three of those features. The big area we see this is in the area of reading. Students who have reading difficulties often just need text-to-speech software, optical character recognition to scan their texts in to the computer, and also study tools to help out with comprehension. That's just three individual tools.
But for many of the programs that we have that are in the reading area, they have around 70 different tools. So we sit down with the student, we teach them all 70 tools, the poor student goes home that night, sits down to do their homework and they don't have a clue where to begin because they're overwhelmed with all the different options. So we have to change our focus around these products. We have to stop focusing on the product, and focus in on the tools within that product, match those tools up to the student and teach the student just the tools that they need to do and teach them in the context of "how am I going to do my homework tonight? " so that they know how to apply it when they get home.
