Week 8 -- Exploring Assistive Technology

I found out this week that 17% of the students in my district have IEPs and this figure doesn't include those who have 504 plans. This was a wake up call to assess our high school library and see what we can do to make it a more accessible learning environment to all students.  This is especially important because only a few of the SPED classes come to the library as a group--why don't they come? In addition, many of the students on IEPs are in mainstream classes so we don't even know who they are.  When we help students develop library skills and access to information, we need to take down barriers, not put them up.  There are some simple things we can do to make the library physically more accessible--better signage, comfortable chairs, a quiet area with dimmer lights. We have headphones that students can use if they need to listen to text.  But for me, the main take away is that I need to check my own assumptions when helping students access information. If a student is looking for a book to read, we need to understand their reading level as well as their interests and make sure we stock books at a variety of levels (this is good for ELL students too).  At the high school level, we work with both science and social studies classes teaching students how to conduct research. We need to be coordinating with teachers to be aware which students could benefit from lower lexile levels and the text to speech options built into databases. And, as I continue to work on our new website, I will use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as well as these Accessibility Tips
 from Libguides regarding layout, colors, fonts, images and assets, among other things.

One of the most important points, however, is that designing a library's physical spaces and its resources with all users in mind benefits everyone. Further, assistive technology can be useful to those who don't require it for learning--audiobooks or text to speech/speech to text are becoming universally enjoyed.