Supporting Hearing-Impaired Students through Educational Technology
Posted by Jen Santaniello on Tue, Dec 01, 2009 @ 12:06 PM
According to the American Disabilities Act (ADA), students with disabilities must meet the same standards in pursuing their academic careers as those without disabilities. Educators are therefore faced with the challenge of fulfilling their teaching responsibilities for all of their students, including those who may be hearing impaired.
In order to comply with ADA requirements and to remove educational barriers for hearing-impaired students, instructors have employed many strategies, including hiring interpreters to interpret spoken English into American Sign Language and providing both visual aids and written announcements to cover important class material.
Over the years, however, educational technology has also begun to play a vital role in assisting hearing-impaired students. Technology used to support students with hearing disabilities include:
1. Assistive Learning Systems - These devices enable an instructor's voice to be transmitted from a microphone (worn by the instructor) to the hearing-impaired student. With this device, the instructor's voice is clear, enabling the student to listen attentively without the distraction of background noise.
2. Speech-to-Text Systems - These systems convert spoken language into written language, enabling a professor to provide written transcripts of each lesson to hearing-impaired students.
3. E-Learning - The growing popularity of online learning courses has allowed many hearing-impaired students to study at their own pace via a web browser.
4. Lecture Capture Systems - These systems enable professors to record their lectures and to post them online for students to review after class via a web browser, iPod, or mobile device. Professors with hearing-impaired students are finding it beneficial to record an interpreter as part of the class capture experience. When the students review the recording after class, they are able to see both the interpreter and the material presented in class within the same screen, allowing them to fully grasp the subject matter. An example of this can be found here.
5. Websites, text messaging and e-mail are also visual ways to assist hearing-impaired students.
These are just a few of the many strategies being used in today's classrooms to enhance the education of hearing-impaired students. By combining assistive technologies with other classroom methods, instructors can help eliminate the gap between the educational performance of hearing-impaired students and students with normal hearing while adhering to ADA requirements.
What assistive technologies and instructional methods are you using to ensure ADA compliance for students with hearing disabilities?
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