Assistive Technologies that Improve Communication

The importance of communication cannot be overemphasized. Effective communication in the classroom is not just for better academic performance. Effective communication is also for social development and confidence building. Inside the classroom, the teacher is the greatest influence that will develop effective communication. When teaching students with communication difficulties, the special education teacher utilizes facial expressions, gestures, and sign language. But, aside from the teacher’s own skills and dedication, there are assistive technologies that will be helpful to the student who suffer from communication difficulties.

Following the task specified by the Special Education Laws, the teacher must explore and evaluate devices that will be effective in assisting this particular group of special students. These students have problems that may range from non-fluency of the English language, to speech impairment, and to underdeveloped verbal communication. They can certainly benefit from these assistive technology devices that will augment communication. The most popular ones, especially in younger children, are symbol systems and communication boards. The pictures utilized for these assistive devices should be clear and free of extra lines and details that will distract the special students. For the new special education teacher, the Internet can be utilized to search for picture databases to be used in the symbol systems and communication boards.

The special education teacher may also consider electronic devices to augment communication. Some of them are programmable switches and speech synthesizers. Programmable switches are easy to use and will allow the special students to respond more quickly. Some programmable switches can record more than 10 messages. Speech synthesizers, on the other hand, can transform a given electronic text into speech. Some teachers have found that speech synthesizers can be obtained along with screen readers.

As time goes by, more and more technologies will be invented for alternative, augmentative, and assistive communication. After all, the need for these technology devices is not limited to the classroom. The devices can also be used by adults from all walks of life. The special education teachers can stay on top of these new assistive technology devices by knowing that all are similar to the basic computer.