Hands-on science enrichment experiences can be limited for students with blindness or low vision (BLV). This manuscript describes recent hands-on summer enrichment programs held for BLV students. Also presented are innovative technologies that were developed to provide spoken quantitative feedback for BLV students engaged in hands-on science…

In today's society, educational opportunities have evolved beyond the traditional classroom setting. Most universities have implemented virtual learning environments in an effort to provide more opportunities for potential or current students seeking alternative and more affordable learning solutions. "User-Centered Design Strategies for…

A phonics-based reading curriculum in which students used an iPad to respond was created for students with developmental disabilities not able to verbally participate in traditional phonics instruction due to their use of augmentative and assistive communication. Time delay and a system of least prompts used in conjunction with text-to-speech…

This study will explore the constructed image of deaf people in the American society as drawn through analyses of discursive structures in articles on cochlear implantation in major U.S. newspapers published between 2006-2009. To analyze discursive structures of newspaper articles, the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) will be…

Assistive technology (AT) by its very nature consists of a variety of personal and customized tools for multiple learning styles and physical challenges. The author not only encourages students, parents, and educators to advocate for AT services, she also wants them to go a step further and build their own AT toolkits that can instill independence…

A semi-structured interview format was used to explore the experiences and attitudes of twelve parents and twelve teachers of young people, aged 11-18 years, who had received sequential bilateral cochlear implants. The parents stressed the importance of involving the young person in the decision to go ahead with the second implant. Although all…

Psychosocial factors, including socioemotional well-being, peer relationships, and social inclusion with hearing and deaf peers, are increasingly becoming a focus of research investigating children with cochlear implants. The study reported here extends the largely quantitative findings of previous research through a qualitative analysis of…

This study combines multi-mice technology (people with disabilities can use standard mice, instead of specialized alternative computer input devices, to achieve complete mouse operation) with an assistive pointing function (i.e. cursor-capturing, which enables the user to move the cursor to the target center automatically), to assess whether two…

This is an interpretivist qualitative study that explores the contexts and dynamics of friendships among three groups of young adults; each group included an individual with autism or severe disability and high school students without disabilities. Data were collected through ethnographic methods where friends interacted together. Particular…

Participation is considered the most meaningful outcome of rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there were correlations between wheelchair activity recorded with a data logger and community participation as measured by the Participation Survey/Mobility. Data from 16 participants were included in this study. Data…

Two experiments investigate the effectiveness of audiovisual (AV) speech cues (cues derived from both seeing and hearing a talker speak) in facilitating perceptual learning of spectrally distorted speech. Speech was distorted through an eight channel noise-vocoder which shifted the spectral envelope of the speech signal to simulate the properties…

Purpose of the study: To determine whether reported falls at baseline are associated with an older adult's decision to make a residential adjustment (RA) and the type of adjustment made in the subsequent 2 years. Design and Methods: Observations (n = 25,036) were from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative sample of…

The purpose was to examine how caregivers of infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorder view their daily activities/routines and in what way, if any, assistive technology (AT) acts as a support. A total of 134 families who reported their child's disability as autism spectrum disorder/pervasive developmental disorder completed a survey…

The latest compilation from the US Department of Education (from 2010-2011) reports that about 13 percent of public school enrollment consists of students served by special education programs. That count has pretty much stayed the same for the past 13 years. What is different now is that, as technology pervades all aspects of the classroom,…

Many studies have shown that French Cued Speech (CS) can enhance lipreading and the development of phonological awareness and literacy in deaf children but, as yet, there is little evidence that these findings can be generalized to English CS. This study investigated the possible effects of English CS on the speech perception, phonological…