Assistive Technology in the Workplace - Activity #13

At The University of Findlay the Office of Disability Services assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. This office is primarily concerned with meeting the needs of students during the course of their college career at the university. When students step foot onto campus, they can bring their concerns to this office to address their specific needs. These requests can range from special desks (to accompany wheelchairs) to screen readers and audio books to note taking services and scribes. Each student has unique needs and over the years many solutions have been adopted. Technology that is currently available from UF's Office of Disability Services:

• Read Please - Screen Reader
• JAWS for Windows - Screen Reader
• Learning Ally - Audio Books
• Carbon Notebooks - notebooks used to make actual carbon copies
• Live Scribe - Electronic note taking and voice recorder
• Digital Audio Recorders
• Dragon Dictation - Voice to text software
• Kurzweil 3000 - Optical Character Recognition (OCR)/Read aloud software
• ZoomText - Low visibility software
• Cirque Track Pads - Alternative to computer mouse and/or laptop track pad
• Kensington Track Balls - Alternative to computer mouse and/or laptop track pad

When discussing the services offered with the Director of the Office of Disability Services (ODS), the main theme was individualized attention for each student with special needs was the priority. The ODS recognizes that the needs of each student is unique, software and technology is often purchased on an as needed basis as updating technology becomes an unnecessary expense when it isn't utilized. The director also stated that technology is becoming less of a concern for the ODS because of BYOD. Students are now more likely to bring the technology that works best for them and the ODS provides the level of support students request.