Impressions from ALATEC 2016

This year's ALATEC (Alabama Assistive Technology Expo & Conference) happened last week at Auburn University.  I had the opportunity to attend a couple of the sessions and learned some useful insights and tips for working with students who may need special accommodations -- insights and tips that will help a lot of other students as well.

I had the chance to listen to Luis Perez show off features in iOS 10 that may make lives easier for a range of users.  Luis Perez focuses in his research on inclusion and universal design, and his web site contains a number of interesting tools and strategies.

Here some of the takeaways from his session that focused on iOS devices:
If you have visibility issues that can be corrected through changes in color schemes, go to
Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations.  Here you can

• invert colors (note that this also inverts colors of images)
• turn on Color Filters to see your device in Gray scale or in a different tint that may help you with different types of color blindness -- Protanopia, Dueternaopia or Trianopia -- or you can set a Color Tint to create less of an emotional turmoil if certain colors increase your stress level.

Under Accessibility, you will also find your Magnifier that allows you to turn your camera into a magnifying glass -- if you ever needed to read serial numbers, you will love this feature.

Under Speech, you can turn on Speak Selection -- this allows you to have written text that you select read to you - -and this can happen in any language.

You will also see your options of Voices here, the speed you want text read to you (turtle or hare) - imagine using this feature for students who are learning a new language.

Typing Feedback allows you to hear the last letter or word you typed -- very useful for dyslexia

And, finally, this is for all of you out there who cannot call me through Siri:  you can train your phone for a particular pronunciation, Speech > Pronunciation where you type in the word, type in an approximation of the phonetic word and then save this for future references.

Of course you can also turn your iOS device into a full braille-capable device and have apps that recognize currency so that you don't have to figure out what a bill is, not to mention the app Tap tap See that takes a picture of an object and then tells you what the object is.

The other session I was at discussed working with students who are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.  Jessi Wright from UAB gave a passionate presentation on different ways we need to rethink what we do with students -- but most importantly, that we need to help students be stronger advocates for themselves.

As I am sure you know, ADD and ADHD are the number one reason students need accommodation in college, with constantly increasing numbers.  If we get such memos, we know what we have to do to help, but here are some other ideas and these ideas may help all students.

1.  During exams have timers available

2.  During exams and individual activities allow students to wear noise cancelling headsets that may play music of white noise

3.  Have fidget tools at hand

4.  Allow for movement breaks

5.  Provide all students with resources on note taking, focused learning, recognizing when their best time for learning is

6.  use mid mapping or brain storming tools for students to collect an outcome of their thinking

Students can use tools to cut down on distraction -- for example the Readibility extension for Chrome that cuts out all the advertisement and just shows text.  Students need to choose to sit close to the action

Finally -- teaching your courses in EASL spaces makes it easier for students with ADD/ADHD to focus, so they will be more successful as students.