Survey of speech, language, and communication disorders for educators. Consideration of varied disorders that might be encountered in educational settings; application to children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

This course is an overview of speech, language, and hearing disorders. It will investigate the impact of communication on children with developmental disabilities and enable non-specialists to work effectively with this population. Throughout this course, we will consider a range of problems (i.e. neurological and physiological disabilities), as well as applications to children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Survey of speech, language, and communication disorders for educators. Consideration of varied disorders that might be encountered in educational settings; application to children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Syllabus Description: This course is an overview of speech, language, and hearing disorders. It will investigate the impact of communication on children with developmental disabilities and enable non-specialists to work effectively with this population. Throughout this course, we will consider a range of problems (i.e. neurological and physiological disabilities), as well as applications to children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

La Trousse d’outils d’accessibilité est une collaboration entre BCcampus et le Centre for Accessible Post-Secondary Education (CAPER-BC ou Centre pour les études post-secondaire accessible). BCcampus est une organisation financée par les fonds publics qui utilise la technologie pour relier les compétences, les programmes et les ressources de tous institutions post-secondaire de C.B. dans un réseau de services de livraisons collaborative. BCcampus est l’organisation en tête du projet de manuels scolaires ouverts en CB. CAPER-BC fournit des matériaux d’enseignement et d’apprentissage aux étudiants et instructeurs qui ne peuvent pas utiliser l’impression conventionnelle à cause de déficiences. English translation: http://opentextbc.ca/accessibilitytoolkit

This guide answers the questions:
What is OER?
Why Adopt OER?
How do you find and use OER?
How do you embracing Open Pedagogy?

Includes a sample open pedagogy assignment: Celebrating Diversity Libguide

Unify Inclusive Technology Decision-Making
Share:
Individualized educational plans (IEPs) provide a student’s education team with clarity on what a child participates in and how a child engages within an educational program. IEP team members, including students, families, educators, direct service providers, and building administrators, serve as the decision-making body for these supports and services. Technology staff can also consider these plans as a foundation for how technology will support the learner to access the general curriculum.

When the technology needs of students extend beyond the district-wide technology hardware and software resources, the interoperability between the laptop or tablet and the assistive technologies become critical. Device interoperability means information can be sent to and received from an array of devices, including assistive technologies such as screen readers, and other accessibility tools seamlessly.

Students with physical or sensory (visual or hearing) support needs may require such specific assistive technologies. Such devices include single switches, expanded keyboards, screen readers, or captioning programs. TechMatrix is an online database provided by the American Institute for Research that provides more information about available assistive technologies. In addition, some students may have tools such as digital pens or VR sets written in their IEPs to support learning opportunities. Similarly, such tools should sync seamlessly with the student devices.

Actions to unify inclusive technology decision-making with interoperable assistive technologies include:

Collaborate across the IT, EdTech, and AT leadership teams to choose devices and ensure the interoperability of such devices.
Require the purchase of accessible, interoperable technologies by including such requirements in requests for proposals (RFPs) and district contracts. Ensure all partners, such as state educational agencies, regional educational service agencies, and non-profits understand and mimic these practices.
Include individuals with disabilities in procurement and purchasing decisions, such as students, parents, organizational partners, or community volunteers.

Despite the progress that has taken place in the sector of technology, efforts of ensuring the inclusion of persons with disabilities remain limited. This is due to the limited opportunities of capacity building, weak awareness among engineers and industrialists, and the hindering of persons with disabilities’ voices in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy development and decision-making.

Inspired by the disposition of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities regarding accessibility, the Global Initiative for Information and Communication Technologies have been playing a pivotal role in promoting the persons with disabilities’ right to inclusive ICTs. Benefiting from the results of its Digital Accessibility Right Evaluation Index, G3ICT has realized the increasing commitment of CRPD States Parties to issues of ICT Accessibility. Nevertheless, The DARE index data show the remaining challenges encountered by governments’ procurement capacity for offering actual support to inclusive ICT programs, products, and services. ICT accessibility continues to be absent from higher education and vocational training programs. Furthermore, advocacy efforts of persons with disabilities and their organizations remain limited within the realm of digital accessibility.

This paper discusses G3ICT’s Digital Accessibility Right Education (DARE) Academy, and its role in tackling issues of digital divide through offering a platform of educational development and advocacy capacity enhancement for persons with disabilities around issues of ICT accessibility.

This is a nine-module synchronous training for teachers created using the Washinton State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Inclusionary Practices Handbook, Section One, Chapter One; Collaborative Practices that Support Inclusion. These modules offer participants opportunities to engage and collaborate around practices to support making their classrooms more inclusive for all students.

This is a ten-module synchronous training for teachers created using the Washinton State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Inclusionary Practices Handbook, Section One, Chapter Two; Inclusive Learning Environments. These modules offer participants opportunities to engage and collaborate around practices making their classrooms more inclusive for all students.

Chemeketa Community College is committed to creating an inclusive learning environment that meets the needs of its diverse employee and student bodies. This means that all students, faculty and staff including those with disabilities, are provided equal and equitable access to all digital resources, technologies, websites and and other services used to provide information, assistance, programs, services or any other access to Chemeketa faculty, staff, students or visitors. An Action Plan Team convened to help develop a plan in conjunction with a Digital Accessibility Policy that was in development for the College. The purpose of the team was to consider ways to help implement and promote the policy along the way. The team put together some specifics of what should be put into both the process and guideline documents to help guide the accessibility work once the policy is in place.

Technology can be a powerful tool to assist students with special needs or any sort of learning challenge. In particular the Chrome web browser allows users to install a wide variety of web extensions that provide tools that can help all learners, regardless of ability level.

In this blog post we will take a look at over 30 Chrome web extensions that can assist students in five main categories:
Text to Speech
Readability
Reading Comprehension
Focus
Navigation

Some of the tools fit into more than one topic, but each is only listed once. Certainly this list does not cover all of the useful web extensions available for struggling learners, but it is a great place to begin. In addition to the list of extension, I have also linked in the video from a webinar I did a while back on "Google Tools for Special Needs".

The Center on Inclusive Software for Learning's flexible, adaptive, and customizable digital learning environment.

This Lesson was created to use in conjunction with materials in Clusive [https://clusive.cast.org], a free, online learning environment that makes materials flexible and accessible.  The Lesson is designed for students in grades 6-8, and targets ELA standards as well as SEL skills of self-awareness and learner agency. As you use this lesson, students will be guided to recognize, understand, and apply key elements of a mystery story, tools that they can use to build learner agency, self-awareness, and comprehension

This course focuses on the land use-transportation "interaction space" in metropolitan settings. The course aims to develop an understanding of relevant theories and analytical techniques, through the exploration of various cases drawn from different parts of the world. The course begins with an overview of the role of transportation in patterns of urban development and metropolitan growth. It introduces the concept of accessibility and related issues of individual and firm travel demand. Later in the semester, students will explore the influence of the metropolitan built environment on travel behavior and the role of transportation on metropolitan land development. The course will conclude with an examination of the implications of the land use-transportation interaction space for metropolitan futures, and our abilities to forecast them.

This online textbook addresses the population of individuals with disabilities that experience complex lifelong needs across multiple areas in their lives. Drs. Sennott and Loman drafted this book (along with the help from some friends) with the hope of providing pertinent, practical, and current resources to future special educators who plan to serve individuals with complex disabilities.

The #GoOpen Blog is an opportunity for members to highlight the work of #GoOpen states and districts, so that we can learn from one another.

The following information is provided to help you craft your post. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to info@goopen.us with any questions.
Checklist:
Please include the following with your blog post submission:

Blog Title
Word Count – 400-600 words (but if you go shorter or longer, that’s fine!)
Photo, Caption, Attribution & Alt-Text – We’d like you to include a photo that aligns with the content of your post – this can be a photo that you’ve taken, or an openly licensed photo. Please provide a caption for the photo, the proper attribution (See https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution best practices for attribution), and alt-text that describes your photo for someone who may be using a screen reader (See https://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/#context best practices for writing alt-text.
Brief Author Bio – Provide a 1-2 sentence bio to let others know who you are and where you are from.

Additional Guidelines

Endorsements:As best practice, GoOpen.us posts and engagement should avoid endorsements of specific companies or products that are meant to promote commercial organizations or businesses. In some cases, mention of commercial entities may be acceptable if the purpose is not to sell products or services but is illustrate an example, further the learning of the group, or document the experience of a #GoOpen Network member and is relevant to the goals of the #GoOpen Initiative.
PII: Any and all personally identifiable information should be removed from the post.
Use: In addition to publishing your post on the #GoOpen Network blog, we will share your post via the #GoOpen Newsletter and social media and encourage you to do the same!

Submission

Email your blog post to info@goopen.us and cc:mailto:sara.trettin@ed.gov
We will review your post and offer suggested edits for clarity or conciseness.
Once you’ve reviewed our suggested edits and accepted any changes, we will schedule your post and let you know when it will be published!

Types of Posts
Not sure where to start? Consider one of these types of posts!

Informational Posts

What’s new in your state or district? Is there a new strategy or approach you are piloting? A topic you are exploring in-depth? An opportunity to collaborate with other states or districts? Informational posts are all about sharing your work with the community!

Reflective Posts

What’s your state or district learning? Has your district team been reflecting on your approach? What have you learned? How are you tweaking your implementation approach? Are you diving into the literature on a particular topic? Reflective posts provide an opportunity to take a step back and share what you are learning with the community!

List Posts

What tips, best practices, lessons learned, or key takeaways can you share that might be helpful for others in the community? These could focus on any aspect of your state or district OER work, for example, three key takeaways from the latest summit or five tips for communicating about your work to parents.

How-to Posts

Have you figured out the perfect approach for some aspect of OER implementation? Consider sharing a step-by-step how-to post that details your approach and any implementation resources so others can follow your lead!

Interview Posts

Have a rockstar teacher, librarian, admin or other OER champion in your state or district? Consider highlighting their work through a brief Q&A post.

Coordinating Early Childhood Systems

Adults and a young child collaborating in an early learning classroom
While early childhood providers and families prioritize activities that optimize interactivity with peers and the natural environment, print and digital materials and technologies are commonly present in early learning settings, including the home and community. If and when they are determined to be appropriate, interactive materials and technologies need to be accessible if children with disabilities are to benefit from inclusive settings. Examples of accessible materials and technologies in early learning settings can include:

Tactile books that include a combination of print and braille
Video that includes captioning of sounds and audio description of visual elements
Mobile apps that are compatible with a child’s assistive technology (AT)
Ensuring that children with disabilities in early childhood programs can participate in all range of activities in early childhood programs is effectively achieved through a coordinated approach requiring collaboration between a number of agencies, federal, state, and local service providers, and families and caregivers.

Coordinating Workforce Development Systems

Adults in a workplace environment collaborating
Career training and other workforce development activities take place across a variety of settings. For example, students with disabilities transition to a range of postsecondary programs, including two- and four-year colleges, career training programs (e.g., pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships), and directly to employment or to seeking employment. The Critical Components of the Quality Indicators for Workforce Development are designed to assist in the development of coordinated systems that result in the timely provision of accessible materials and technologies for all students and job seekers with disabilities who need them, regardless of the setting where services are provided to them.

This handout helps writers create accessible Word and PDF documents with an emphasis on visibility, audibility, and mobility.