2008 Woodie Awards
Fair day for assistive technology
Lucinda Sutherland
BizTech Writer
Issue date: 3/12/07 Section: BizTech
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The fair helped inform students with disabilities, their parents and the professionals who help them about challenges they face in the transition from high school to college or technical schools.
Hundreds gathered in the ballroom at Boise’s DoubleTree Riverside Hotel last week to listen to the guest speakers and take advantage of the workshops offered.
Brett Eastburn, who was born without arms or legs, opened the Fair with his keynote speech to energize and encourage everyone in the room.
His life story provided an excellent example of overcoming disabilities. In fact, he claims that he doesn’t have any disabilities.
Following Eastburn’s speech, his wife Chrisa displayed a T-shirt bearing a picture of Eastburn in his high school wrestling gear.
In 1988 he placed fourth in a national AAU wrestling competition.
He participated in many other sports and now tours as a motivational speaker and comedian.
Another featured speaker was Edie Bush from Caribou County, Idaho, who had all of her limbs amputated about four years ago while she was in a coma.
Assistive technology made it possible for her to return to work only a week after going home from the hospital.
“I’ve been talking a great deal in the past year about how we transition students from high school to college,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna said. “To carry that conversation a bit further: how do we meet the specific needs of students with disabilities who want to transition to their post-secondary life and attend the college or university of their choice? And once we get students in the post-secondary setting what are we doing to accommodate their needs?”
Workshops at the fair helped answer Luna’s questions.
Representatives from many of Idaho’s colleges led classes to help students and parents learn more about the accommodations at the college or tech school of their choice.
Other classes were designed to help educators learn more about assistive technology they need to help their students use.
“My presentation today was on the power of hand-held computers, which used to be called PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants),” Kathy Griffin, an assistive technology practitioner and program director for United Cerebral Palsy of Idaho, said.
“They’ve done a lot of experimentation with the power of a hand-held computer because they are so much cheaper than buying a laptop for every student.
The teacher can make an assignment and then, because of the way handhelds beam to each other, could beam it to several students, then the students can beam it to other students, in about ten minutes every student in the class could receive the assignment.
This system will ensure that nobody can lose the assignment, write it down wrong or get the dates mixed up. Everything is all there exactly the same way the teacher had it to begin with.”
Her workshop also covered how the computers can help students keep track of their schedules and assignments or even read the text of entire books.
“The assistive technology that I’ve seen give the greatest assistance has been the Prentke Romich devices. These are concentrating on the individual’s ability to communicate independently,” Allen Renshaw, a speech language pathologist and coordinator of the Assistive Technology Team, said. Renshaw demonstrated Prentke Romich devices, which look like keyboards with picture symbols, but are actually communication devices with a voice used to speak for people who cannot speak or sign.
One of these devices is called the Springboard. “They’ve certainly given the opportunity to transform a number of lives.
One individual who has only the use of a pressure switch on the side of the head, no hands, no arms, no legs and cannot speak, is able to provide independent communication and do so fairly rapidly.
He can tell you what kind of beer he wants to drink and what he wants to eat and who he’s going to be going downtown with fairly rapidly.”
Vendors at the fair were mostly from colleges or state agencies seeking to help the disabled gain assistance.
Vendors with technology for individuals with visual impairment were the most prevalent and offered everything from remote-controls with extra-large buttons to Braille label-makers and instructions for voting assistance.
Technology inventors have a long history of inspiration and motivation from loved ones with disabilities.
BI Capture was the newest technology on display.
It consists of a digital video system to enable parents and teachers to easily capture video proof of behavior intended to be shared confidentially later in medical consultation.
The sponsors of the fair include the Idaho Assistive Technology Project, the Idaho State Department of Education, the Center on Disabilities and Human Development, the Idaho Interagency Council on Secondary Transition and the Idaho Council on Developmental Disabilities.
Members of these agencies were present and active during the fair to make sure it was a complete success.
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