Article Response: Assistive Technology and Universal Design for Learning

Assistive Technology and Universal Design for Learning: Two Sides of the Same Coin

David H rose, Ted S Hasselbring, Skip Stahl, and Joy Zabala

A very interesting article about the intermingling of Assistive Technology and Universal Design of Learning.  It explains how AT and UDL are different but they are completely complimentary “kind of like two sides of a coin”.  It was very interesting how its said that advancements in one prompts/drives advances in the other one.  Low-tech AT has been around for several years but High-tech is relatively new.  UDL has been established in other fields for years but it relatively new to the education world.

“UDL and AT can be thought of as two approaching existing on a continuum.  At the ends of this continuum, the two approaches are easily distinguishable.  Toward the middle of the continuum, such easy distinctions are muddied, and there are greater points of interaction and commonality.”

 ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY                                                UNIVERSAL DESIGN OF LEARNING

Assistive Technology is technology that helps people increase, improve, or maintain the functional capabilities of students with disabilities. It is designed to help people with their disabilities overcome their struggles in various environments and promotes independence.  UDL is a process for creating or implementing “products or structures” so that they are less challenges for people to learn or achieve an outcome.  It promotes flexibility, alternatives, options and adaptations. 

One of the things that came up for me was how it would be easier to establish a learning environment that fosters UDL and AT in a learning center compared to a classroom.  In learning centers there’s lots of space with various workstations and work areas that are set up to accommodate the students.  Often there are less students in the LC compared to the classroom and more support.  It has it’s own structure and technologies that are designed around key students that utilize the room. 

My favorite quote from the article is “As assistive technology matures, it will advance by assuming increasing connectivity with universal designs, taking advantage of the common structures to provide highly individualized solutions that are not only sensory and motor but also cognitive and linguistic-oriented.”