This volume offers a comprehensive, up-to-date, empirical and methodological view over the new scenarios and environments for language teaching and learning recently emerged (e.g. blended learning, e-learning, ubiquitous learning, social learning, autonomous learning or lifelong learning), and also over some of the new approaches to language…

Purpose: This study characterized the development of speech sound production in prelingually deaf children with a minimum of 8 years of cochlear implant (CI) experience. Method: Twenty-seven pediatric CI recipients' spontaneous speech samples from annual evaluation sessions were phonemically transcribed. Accuracy for these speech samples was…

This article describes the struggles of two tough moms who team up to start their own company. Fed up with a lack of stylish, properly-fitting shoes for their children with cerebral palsy, they established "Keeping Pace" which currently offers a selection of stylish girls' and boys' athletic sneakers and casual dress shoes for boys, all sold…

The relationship between language and executive function (EF) and their development in children have been the focus of recent debate and are of theoretical and clinical importance. Exploration of these functions in children with a peripheral hearing loss has the potential to be informative from both perspectives. This study compared the EF and…

This paper investigates patterns of error production in 10 children who use cochlear implants, focusing specifically on the acquisition of obstruents. Two broad patterns of production errors are investigated, fortition (or strengthening) errors and lenition (or weakening) errors. It is proposed that fortition error patterns tend to be related to…

This study evaluated an intervention for promoting wearing of prescription glasses in 4 individuals with mental retardation who had refused to wear their glasses previously. Distraction through noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) increased independent glasses wearing for 1 of the 4 participants. An intervention consisting of NCR, response cost, and…

As part of a diagnosis and tutoring project in an elementary education reading course, a pre-service teacher was encouraged to use an iPad as the vehicle for intervention strategies with a fifth grade struggling reader with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The device not only helped the student focus attention, it facilitated his becoming…

The fields of pattern recognition and machine learning are on a fundamental quest to design systems that can learn the way humans do. One important aspect of human intelligence that has so far not been given sufficient attention is the capability of humans to express when they are certain about a decision, or when they are not. Machine learning…

Improving Web accessibility for disabled users visiting a university's Web site is explored following the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act rules for Web page designers to ensure accessibility. The literature supports the view that accessibility is sorely lacking, not only in the USA, but also…

Informal science education (ISE) experiences can provide powerful opportunities for people with disabilities to experience and learn about science. When designed to be inclusive, such experiences can lead people with disabilities to feel competent and empowered as science learners, generate excitement and enthusiasm for science, and be equitable…

Hearing is one of the five senses. Hearing gives access to sounds in the world--people's voices, their words, a car horn blown in warning or as hello! When a child has a hearing loss, it is cause for immediate attention. That is because language and communication skills develop most rapidly in childhood, especially before the age of 3. When…

Factors contributing to parents' decision when they choose between cochlear implantation (CI) and traditional hearing aids for their child were examined. The subjects were children with severe/profound hearing loss, born 1999-2001, registered in the universal neonatal hearing screening program in the Flanders region of Belgium. Qualitative data…

The practice of technology transfer continues to evolve into a discipline. Efforts continue in the field of assistive technology (AT) to move technology-related prototypes, resulting from development in the academic sector, to product commercialization within the business sector. The article describes how technology transfer can be linked to…

In this article we describe an Australian project in which linguists, signed language interpreters, medical and health care professionals, and members of the Deaf community use the technology of the Internet to facilitate cooperative language development. A web-based, interactive multimedia lexicon, an encyclopedic dictionary, and a database of…

It seems appropriate, if not necessary, to use empirically supported criteria to evaluate reading software applications. This study's purpose was to develop a research-based evaluation framework and review selected beginning reading software that might be used with struggling beginning readers. Thirty-one products were reviewed according to…