Assistive devices for special needs students have improved dramatically over the last decade. Ask a Tech Teacher has a summary of the current status:

• Why the right technology matters
• AAC Communication devices
• Table mounts and access tools
• Visual schedules and timers
• Sensory regulation tools

The Essential Learning Devices and Technology for Special Education Classrooms

Every student deserves meaningful opportunities to participate in classroom learning, regardless of their communication, mobility, sensory or developmental needs. The right assistive technology can help you adapt lessons, support independence and give students more ways to express themselves. However, choosing suitable equipment requires balancing individual student needs with school budgets. You also need to identify reliable special education classroom assistive technology suppliers to ensure product quality and long-term usability.

Why the Right Learning Technology Matters in Special Education

Choosing assistive technology for a special education classroom can be challenging when you need to match affordable equipment to individual abilities and choose suppliers that offer reliable products and support. (more…)

Surprisingly, 15-20% of the population has a language-based learning disability and over 65% of those are deficits in reading. Often, these go undiagnosed, written off as “s/he doesn’t like to read”. If this sounds familiar to you, maybe before you became a writer you struggled with adopting the love of reading, check out the International Dyslexia Association’s Dyslexia Awareness Month in October.

Dyslexia is a condition that affects people of all ages, male and female equally, and causes them to mix up letters and words they read making what for most is a joy-filled act challenging and frustrating. (more…)

So much available to differentiate for every student’s special need. Here are 50 apps and websites (check here for updated links): (more…)

January marks Braille Literacy Month (January 4th is Braille Day) and a remarkable milestone: 200 years since Louis Braille developed his revolutionary code that continues to impact lives today. In 1824, at just 15 years old, Louis Braille created a tactile code that would open new worlds of literacy and learning.

Braille uses 63 combinations of raised dots to represent letters, numbers, punctuation, and contractions. Each cell has two columns of three dots. The left column is numbered 1, 2, 3 from top to bottom, and the right column is numbered 4, 5, 6. Each dot has a unique number.

Braille literacy websites (click for updated list of special needs websites for the vision challenged):

1. HumanWare–various writing/reading tools for the blind
2. JAWS
3. National Library Service for the Blind–free, from the Library of Congress
4. Natural reader–paste text into the dialogue box and the site reads it to you
5. Panopreter–text-to-speech
6. Snap n Read–select text and click speaker icon on the toolbar.

–image credit DepositPhotos

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

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Copyright ©2026 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

“The content presented in this blog is the result of my creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Recognizing dyslexia

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As you prepare for the holiday break and then a new year, it’s a great time to think about resources available in your classes for students with special needs. Ask a Tech Teacher has a long list of online websites and apps for a variety of special needs, but if you’re looking for a good overview of general tips, check these out:

Tips for Supporting Students With Special Needs Using Technology

You might not realize that over 60% of students with special needs benefit remarkably from technology-integrated learning environments. To effectively support these students, you can start by understanding each student’s unique challenges and strengths. Have you considered how assistive technologies like text-to-speech can be tailored to individual needs? By engaging students in selecting personalized tools, you empower them to take charge of their learning journey. Parental involvement and open communication also play vital roles. But how do you guarantee these strategies lead to meaningful progress? There’s a lot more to explore in optimizing these approaches. (more…)

A lot of teacher-authors read my WordDreams blog. In this monthly column, I share the most popular post from the past month on my writer’s blog, WordDreams:

Here’s the complete overview on the role of assistive tech in encouraging inclusivity in education:

• What does that mead?
• What are the benefits?
• What are the drawbacks?
• What types are available?
• How do you create one in your class or school?

The Role of Assistive Technology in Promoting Inclusive Education

Persons with disabilities may struggle with coordination problems, short attention spans, and limited mobility, which may or may not be obvious. Some disabilities include blindness, deafness, dyslexia, and autism. Whether the symptoms are apparent or not, these disabilities can affect their cognitive and learning processes.

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Tech Tips for Writers is an occasional post on overcoming Tech Dread among teacher-authors. I’ll cover issues that writer friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future tip.

You may have seen this on my education blog

A friend posted about needing suggestions for speech-to-text options for his writing. It reminded me that some people may not know that this tool is now built into both Google Docs and MS Word (for those with Office 365 only). Make sure your microphone is enabled and then here’s how to use them:

MS Word

• Open a Word doc
• Go to Home>Dictate

Google Docs

• Be sure you are in Chrome
• Open Google Docs (easiest way: type doc.new into your Chrome browser for a new file)
• Go to Tools>Voice typing

That’s it! Questions? Ask them in the comments

Copyright © 2023 AskaTechTeacher.com – All rights reserved.

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

http://eepurl.com/chNlYb

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

I don’t write enough about special needs so when Rose contacted me with an article idea, I was thrilled. Rose Scott is a literary teacher with a goal of making education comfortable for students with special needs. Her dream is to help students explore their talents and abilities.

In this article, Rose writes about a little-known problem that students may unknowingly suffer from that may make it look like they are plagiarizing when–to them–they aren’t.

Read on:

Many people have come to believe that plagiarism is intentional and evil, and all students whose works have text coincidences are shameless wrongdoers. While it may seem that the majority of plagiarists do turn out to be cheaters, there are exceptions. Have you ever heard of cryptomnesia?

Cryptomnesia, according to the Merriam-Webster medical dictionary, is “the appearance in consciousness of memory images which are not recognized as such but which appear as original creations.” In other words, a person says something for the first time (as he or she thinks), but in reality he/she has already mentioned it, and now just doesn’t remember the previous occurrence.

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