Reading Rulers
On January 28th, I attended a workshop called “Assistive Technology Solutions for Struggling Students,” presented by a Parents Helping Parents (PHP) AT specialist, Jan Tuber. The presentation offerred some great ideas for low tech assistive technology that I can use in my occupational therapy work with the students of HTS!
Have you ever bought an app for the iPhone or the iPad and it wasn’t what you thought it would be? I have done that too many times. So now before I buy an app I want to make sure it’s worth my money and most importantly make sure it’s useful.
I work in the Vocational Education Program at Hope Technology School and one of my jobs is to find apps for the iPad that our students can use. In the process of looking for apps that our students can use, I have found these 3 websites to be very helpful:
I have asked myself this question too many times to count. At times I have found an answer and at other times I am lost in the silence of my own voice. Why have I not been able to overcome my speech impediment and speak fluently? Why do I have these limitations? Why do I stutter? Why am I like this?
In order to answer this question, I had to ask myself a different question which is, “who would I be if I never stuttered?” If I were to grow up without stuttering, I would have never developed the ability to listen to people and hear what they have to say no matter how long it took them. Instead of hating who I’ve become, I needed to see a meaning in my disability. Then I began to understand how my weaknesses were teaching me to care for other people.
The past few years I have been able to work in the Vocational Education Program at the Hope Technology School with teens that are nonverbal and communicate using assistive technology, having the speech impediment that I have helps me understand about 1% of what they go through. Working with these teens has really inspired me to see things differently. Instead of just speaking up for myself now, I feel the need to speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves and sincerely try to feel what they feel. That is why I am like this.
Today I was given the idea by some friends of mine that I should use an AAC app to help me speak more fluently.
See, I have been stuttering since about first grade and I am now going into my junior year of college. I have a pretty severe speech impediment and I also have Tourette syndrome. Speaking is very difficult for me and most of the time I get really exhausted from talking and end up just not wanting to talk anymore.
I must admit, I was very resistant to the fact of using an app on the iPad that speaks for me. We’ve covered touch screen apps before on this blog, but I had yet to use one for myself. I felt as if I were quitting on myself and taking the easy way out.
If I have a voice, I should use it, I shouldn’t have to use a device to speak for me. I didn’t want to think of myself as being that disabled.
It was then I realized just how humbling it was to even think about using an AAC app to speak for me.
I work at Hope Technology School and help with teenagers who are nonverbal and have to use AAC apps on the iPad, such as proloquo2go and assistive chat, to help them speak and communicate. When I started thinking about them, I started trying to understand what they must feel having to use an AAC device to speak for them.
It was from that moment on that I got inspired to want to use a device to speak for me, to help me with my weakness. I also wanted to understand and feel what it’s like to be nonverbal and not be able to express anything at all, except through using an AAC device and what that must feel like. All of this made me wonder just how many people there are out there who are just like me? Not willing to use an AAC device to help them speak.
