Assistive Tech Visit

For the Assistive Technology visit, I went to the tech. center at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library at SJSU. The person that I talked to at the center was very informative as well as very helpful. Here is what I learned:
1. The main goal of the Assistive Technology Center is to teach students how to become more
independent but there are people who work at the center who are there to help.
2. The main disabilities that the Assistive Technology Center normally helps with are students
who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing or Visually Impaired.
3. The AT center has many different programs loaded onto each computer to help students.
A few examples are:
- Adobe PDF read-aloud, Screen reader/screen magnification (some
computers have a program where a person can hold up a piece of paper to a specific magnifier that is attached to the computer and the print will be projected onto a TV
screen (CCTV).
- Voice Recognition
- Reading Machines
4. The AT center also has two specific rooms - one designed for Hard of Hearing students and
one for Visually Impaired students. Students have to request these rooms in advance.
- "Hard of Hearing room": This is a sound proof room. Students are able to go in there and
turn up the volume as loud as they wish and will not bother anyone.
- "Visually Impaired" Room: Where the screen reader, screen magnification, as well as the
Closed Circuit Television is.
5. Other interesting facts that I learned:
- For students with disabilities, there is a specific process that they have to follow in order to
have access to the Assistive Technology Center.
A. These steps are:
- Proof of disability
- See one of 5 counselors that will help him or her be on the right track for graduation.
- Each semester students have to sign up with the DRC in order to get a specific user
code allowing them to access the computers at the AT Center.
(This is a way of informing SJSU and the DRC that the student still attends school).
- The AT center is located on the 2nd floor of the library.
- The center is a very quiet as well as academically focused. One interesting thing that was
pointed out to me was that the center was very cold. The reason for this was because of all
the technology (i.e., computers, printers, etc.) that run in the center generate a lot of heat.
In order to prevent them from overheating, the temperature is kept at a very cool level.
- In addition the center being academically focused, everything that goes on at the center is
kept extremely confidential and all computers are cleared of students work files at the end of
the day.
I found that the AT center was very interesting. I never realized that SJSU offered so many resources for people with disabilities. Being an elementary school teacher of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing, I was glad to see that a college such as SJSU offers support for students with disabilities once they graduate from high school and go on to college. Up until this point, I never truly thought about what resources students might have access to once they leave the K-12 school system. As we had discussed in class this past week, I think that it is extremely important that as teachers, we teach our students how to advocate for themselves, even at the elementary level so that they are better prepared when they graduate from high school.