Overview
The argument presented by Ted S. Hasselbring and Margaret E. Bausch in their article, “Assistive Technologies for Reading,” focuses on the fact that “the potential remains untapped for the larger group of students receiving special services because of learning disabilities” (p72).
Overall, students with autism, hearing impairments, or visual impairments use assistive technologies, rather than students with learning disabilities. Hasselbring and Bausch point out that assistive technology has been used to assist students’ literacy levels with reading support (assist accessing grade-level texts) and reading intervention (strengthen and improve reading skills). An example given of reading support is the Read & Write Gold program, which “provides text-to-speech output of individual words, sentences, or paragraphs,” (p.74) as well as an important writing feature: word prediction. In regards to reading intervention software available, Hasselbring and Bausch mention Scholastic’s READ 180, which is one of a handful that provide intervention specifically designed for older students in grades 4-12. Overall, the authors call attention to the fact that technology is not education; in the end, technology is simply a tool we can use to supplement learning.
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