IEP Michigan Pre-Labor Day Rally in Lansing

Today, disability advocates, parents of children with disabilities, students with disabilities and legislators are gathering on the steps and lawn of the Capitol to express concerns about the conditions under which special education programs are operating.  The organizer, Marcie Lipsitt, is a frequent letter-writer to the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, and an advocate in Southeastern Michigan.  Marcie invited LDA of Michigan to participate.

Source:  Michigan Alliance for Special Education

Often, disability organizations are founded to represent the needs of a particular segment of the disability community, or coalesce around a particular issue that affects a subset of the disability population.  Class size, service availability, teacher qualifications, and supports are issues where we seem to hold common ground.  The devil is mostly in the details.

LDA of Michigan's contribution to the Rally is this statement, to be read by Regina Carey, our current conference chair and president-elect (her term starts in 2014):

Statement of LDA of Michigan for the IEP Michigan Rally

August 29, 2012

The Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan is a 501 3c Non-Profit organization. Most of our work is done by a dedicated group of volunteers. LDA of Michigan is the statewide affiliate of the Learning Disabilities Associationof America.

The mission of LDA of Michigan is to enhance the quality of life for all individuals with learning disabilities and their families through advocacy, education, training and support of research.

If you think that it's harder to be identified with a Specific Learning Disability under IDEA in Michigan, you're right.  Today, one out of three children with IEPs have Specific Learning Disabilities in Michigan.  In 2001, there were over 95 thousand students identified with Specific Learning Disabilities. Ten years later, in 2011, there were only 73 thousand. Since 2001, there has been a decrease of 22 thousand in the number of students with Learning Disabilities. This isn’t because of an educational “miracle” or a massive drop in population-- it’s because the rules changed. The 2004 reauthorization of the IDEA expressly prohibited all states from requiring the “discrepancy model” to identify students with learning disabilities. So, in 2006, the Michigan Rules were made much more stringent. The official numbers are down but we know that a large number of children are simply falling through the cracks.

Source: Annual Special Education Child Count, 2010--MDE

Most students with learning disabilities are in general education classes of 30 or more students, being taught by one general education teacher. With 21^st Century technology, all children with learning disabilities should be able to use accessible instructional materials—with or without IEPs.  A reading barrier should not determine a child’s achievement in social studies, science, math, or the arts. But new innovations in technology will not solve the problem of large class sizes, or completely accommodate children with disabilities. Teachers in the general education classroom can’t do this alone—their districts need the resources to support smaller class sizes, co-teaching, team-teaching and paraprofessional assistants so that all children can be successful in the classroom. 

The "Michigan Merit Curriculum" requirements place a new burden on teens with disabilities. Although the legislature provides for a Personal Curriculum for students with disabilities, implementation has been challenging. Some districts delay Personal Curriculum accommodations until students have failed many courses, and are nearly 18 years old; some use the Personal Curriculum to reduce requirements to unacceptably low levels; and some refuse to implement a Personal Curriculum altogether. The Personal Curriculum is intended to provide some customization of the requirements for graduation. Withholding or delaying the implementation of a Personal Curriculum is yet another barrier to students with disabilities, many of whom have great potential for success.

We believe that children with learning disabilities are capable and competent. Success starts in the classroom, and continues in the workplace and the community. We cannot give up on our children. Education can make a difference. We want our children to achieve maximum independence—through self-determination, with high expectations, and by working on the skills that lead to self-sufficiency. 

What we know is that the number of people requesting help and direction has increased. What we do is provide a helping hand, a listening ear, and a starting point for families navigating the maze of special education. What we want is for individuals with learning disabilities to be recognized for their gifts, talents, and contributions.

Please join us for our conference on November 11^th and 12^th at the Kellogg Conference Center on the campus of Michigan State University.

Source:  LDA of Michigan, 2012

Finally, if you are able, please consider a membership or a donation of your time, talents or treasures to our organization.

We probably have many more concerns than will fit into a 5-10 minute sound-byte, but these concerns--SLD identification, conditions in the classroom, and preparation for life beyond high school--are the essentials.  Unless education addresses the needs of struggling learners, through individualization and personalization, our children will face less access to bright futures as adults.

True Participation

You may be interested in reading John W. Lloyd's Beyond Access: Improving Success where he says:

On the educational front, one of the factors to which many disability rights organizations regularly point is the poor outcomes for students with disabilities after graduation from high school. The litany of unfavorable comparisons between students with disabilities and their not-disabled peers is familiar to many: higher unemployment, less frequent enrollment in post-secondary schools, more frequent contact with and incarceration by law-enforcement officials, etc. These are clearly outcomes that we would not only like to see improved, but also they are improvements that would auger well for our society (e.g., emphasizing the abilities of individuals) and economy (e.g., lower unemployment).

He goes on to advocate for special education to address success, not mere access to participation in the adult world. I agree that this is the critical issue: Just building the bridges doesn't mean that people will know how to use them. In my own reflections on my past encounters with Michigan Rehabilitation Services, this has been a difficult concept to communicate. I find it puzzling that we (K-12 special educators) often offer accommodations to students with Learning Disabilities without planning instruction on how to use these accommodations to successfully level the playing field.

Picture of Alpha Smart Dana on Renaissance Learning Website

I remember when students with writing problems were offered AlphaSmarts to compensate for poor handwriting, poor spelling, note-taking, a lack of word-processing equipment at home, slow writing production, a lack of written composition skills and so on. Our local county chapter of the LDA held a meeting about tools and accommodations, and one family member told me that her grandchild had been given one of those, but no one at the school had any idea how to download and print what she had written on it. What a total waste of resources!! The student got very little benefit out of the AlphaSmart, even though she'd put the time in on her assignments. But, the staff at her school didn't have the training or information to make this a useful and powerful tool for her.

Around the same time, I had borrowed an AlphaSmart from the county Assistive Technology Consultant and, after playing with it for an hour or so, figured out how to upload files onto my computer, and how to print directly from my dot-matrix printer. I also learned how to spell-check, change fonts and line spacing, and cut and paste text. Here I was, thinking how useful this tool was, while at the same time, a whole school had convinced parents that the AlphaSmart was an anachronism, and chose not to use it (or anything else) that might address the problems of access and successful accommodation.

In the interim, the AT Consultant continued to recommend the AlphaSmart to other students at the same school, resulting in a great deal of acrimony between her and the staff at the school, without any resolution. What started as a small problem of poor communication blossomed into a full-blown bickering match between the school staff, parents, and the county consultant. No gains were made for the kids for whom this could have been most helpful. Most of the students waited until they were in high school to access computers in their computer lab, purchase a low-end computer for home use. The most fortunate of these students were given used laptops that their parents bought for them. This, of course, violates one of the primary tenets of FAPE--that the supports and services provided in a public school would be FREE and appropriate. If, in order to have full-time access to the necessary supports and services, a student has to purchase a laptop, or a calculator, or any other tool: how is that "free"? If special education under IDEA ends upon graduation from high school, how have we fulfilled our obligation to the student to maximize access and participation, if we never show students how to independently use the tools and accommodations we recommend? It's a little like someone throwing a kid into a swimming pool and telling them, "Okay, I provided the water, it's your job to learn how to swim in it!"

Technology seems to progress at the speed of light. Now, an AlphaSmart is truly an anachronism. Tablets such as the iPad2 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, with touchscreens, and lightweight, with more bells and whistles than anyone could imagine, make it so much easier for us to get intuitive technology into the hands of young people so that their playing fields are more level now, than ever before.  But, if we only hand them the tools, without showing them what they can do, we might as well just hand them a rock and a stick.

Public Comment to the Michigan Board of Education forum in Ann Arbor

To: Members,  Michigan State Board of Education
Date:  May 26, 2011                                 

My name is Kathleen Kosobud.  I am a “temporarily retired” special educator working on my dissertation. My research focus is on family-school collaboration in special education. I am one of the first 87 teachers in the country to have achieved the status of National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT-EA/Generalist, 1993).  I am also the immediate past president of the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan (LDA), an all-volunteer organization; and I am finishing my service as LDA’s representative on MDE’s Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC).  I am here to speak from my experiences as a teacher, parent, and advocate about righting the course for students with disabilities as they are challenged to meet the High School Content Expectations or “huskies” (HSCEs) of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC).

I read the SBE’s recommendations to Governor Snyder: “Education Improvement and Reform Priorities” and heartily endorse your performance focus regarding graduation, and the ability of graduates to “obtain post-secondary credentials that ensure they are well-equipped with skills for work, self-support, starting a business, and contributing to the common good”. This year marks the first graduating class affected by the changes in curriculum requirements through the Michigan Merit Curriculum.  Although the initial legislation was passed in 2006, with additional legislation supporting the development of “Personal Curricula” (PCs) for students with disabilities passed in 2007, it seems that districts across the state are still unprepared or unwilling to implement PCs for students whose identified disabilities interfere with successful completion of the MMC, without such modification.  During the past year I have fielded calls from parents who have encountered varying forms of resistance to their requests for PC plans for their high schoolers.

One parent called me after school personnel at her son’s 9th grade special education planning meeting (IEP), told him that he would not be getting a diploma.  Stunned by this pronouncement, his comment was, “Then why am I bothering to go to school?”

Another parent called me when her daughter, a senior with mathematics learning disabilities, flunked her first semester of Algebra II.  Although this parent had requested a Personal Curriculum for her daughter since her freshman year, the district said that she had to fail courses in order to warrant consideration for a Personal Curriculum. So, until her senior year, she was left to struggle through all of the curriculum requirements at her high school, without PC modifications and lagging in credit. Since she also was having difficulty with the mathematics HSCEs of chemistry, the district suggested that she drop Band (the one course in which she was experiencing success), in order to take a team-taught class in chemistry, and repeat the Algebra II course that she failed.  Finally, because she was going to be short of credits for graduation at the end of the year, the district would not allow her to walk with her graduating class--students with whom she had attended school for all 12 years of her time in this rural district.

A third parent called after a district told her that they “didn’t do” PCs. Period. This troubles me on a number of levels.

First, students with high-incidence disabilities have always had the potential for gainful employment and full participation in the adult world, with appropriate accommodation for their disabilities.  The reluctance of districts to respond affirmatively to requests for Personal Curricula is punitive, and mean-spirited.  Loss of access to a diploma represents, for students with disabilities, lifelong diminishment of opportunity. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics[1] in April of this year, people with less than a high school education experienced a seasonally adjusted 14.6% unemployment rate nationally.  High school graduates for the same time period experienced a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 9.7%.  This is nearly a 5% difference.  Further, for men with disabilities, ages 16 to 64 years old, the unemployment rate was 16.1%, compared to a 9.2% unemployment rate for those without disabilities[2]  Women in the same age range were unemployed at 15.2% with disabilities and 7.8% without.  We don’t need to “help” our students with disabilities add to these sorry statistical outcomes.

Second, denial of the opportunity to complete high school with the support of a PC reinforces the abundantly-felt lack of self-worth that students with disabilities often acquire as part of their school experiences.  From the time that they begin to show achievement differences, students with disabilities are more likely to be bullied, excluded and devalued.  Denial of opportunity to complete high school with a diploma is, in effect, an institutional validation of everything that students with disabilities have internalized since the early years of their schooling.  Without hope, we see a rise in risky behavior, alienation, and ultimately the justification needed for dropping out.

Third, the failure of districts to appreciate that people ultimately contribute to society in a variety of ways has led to a decrease in the wealth of options for students to be successful in completing “as much as is practicable” of the Michigan Merit Curriculum, in alignment with their talents, interests and career goals.  Many Michigan districts are experiencing, for example, a decrease in enrollment in Career and Technical Education courses, even though there could be many opportunities for the embedding of practical mathematics and sciences in these courses, in fulfillment of the MMC.  Like many of you, I depend on skilled technicians when I need home improvements or repairs. It is a short-sighted form of budget-consciousness that comes out of districts interpreting the MMC as a series of “one size fits all” classes.

I don’t think that the Michigan Board of Education had any intention of increasing the stratification of students by recommending the MMC.  In fact, two years ago, while I was still president of LDA of Michigan, we printed and distributed buttons like the one I’m wearing that reads:  “Rigor, Relevance, Relationships…and ACCESS!”   I adhere to the notion of “assuming competence” in all individuals and so I see the MMC as an opportunity for districts to collaboratively create classes and programs that allow for maximum learning diversity.

Button Design, LDA MI Conference 2009

We have many resources in place to offer technical assistance and support through Michigan's Integrated Improvement Initiatives (MI3)[3] for this work. We can make school a much better environment for students with disabilities, from the time they are identified through the time that they successfully complete high school with the appropriate supports, services, accommodations, and modifications. Districts across the state are using the MMC to develop courses that have the capacity to engage a variety of learners through multiple representations of content, differentiation in the ways that students interact with the content, and opportunities for students to demonstrate their mastery of content in a variety of ways.  These need to be widely shared, and easily accessed by those districts that have fewer resources to devote to the task of curriculum development. Finally, we need to remember that the workforce that will bring Michigan out of its economic slump depends on having diverse enough skills that the collapse of a single industry will not bring us to our knees.

Michigan’s Board of Education has laid the groundwork through the policies that it has crafted to make a more equitable and attainable future. In the words of the late Ronald Edmonds, my former Pioneer High School history teacher (1978 speech):

“We can whenever, and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need, in order to do this. Whether we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far.”

Thank you.

-----
About N Kathleen Kosobud:  Kathleen is a member of the Network of Michigan Educators, a group of 500 or so recognized educators in Michigan who are available to state policy-makers for their expert opinions on policies affecting education and children, through the “Ask the Network” program started by Jean Shane at the MDE.  Kathleen blogs for LDA of Michigan at http://ldamiexchange.blogspot.com/, and for her own amusement at http://backburner-nkk.blogspot.com/.  She was one of the contributors to the revamping of the teacher education program at Michigan State University’s School of Education through a project to infuse inclusive content into all teacher education courses for the preparation of new teachers, under the guidance of Susan J. Peters, Ph.D. After achieving National Board Certification as an Early Adolescence/Generalist as a teacher of middle school mathematics in a special education resource classroom, she served as a teacher-in-residence for Assessment Development at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.  She is the parent of two adult children with learning disabilities, and identifies as a person with learning disabilities, herself.  You can reach her by e-mail.

[1] US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A4: Employment Status of the civilian population 25 years and over by educational attainment http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm, accessed 5/25/11

[2] US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Table A-6. Employment status of the civilian population by sex, age, and disability status, not seasonally adjusted, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t06.htm, accessed 5/25/11

[3] http://cenmi.org/About.aspx

Michigan Merit Curriculum Update (with added editorial comments)

by N. Kathleen Kosobud, for LDA of Michigan

The purple prose you see here is an addition to this blog post, to show the convoluted process that learning can take.  Sometimes when you think you have learned something new you are merely questioning the rightness of something you previously believed.  I admit to being fallible, gullible, and vulnerable to having my beliefs shaken.  I didn't go in search of a rebuttal or, in an act of revenge, attempt to prove that I was right and "they" were wrong but somewhere, we seem to have meandered into the territory of what Stephen Colbert used to refer to as "truthiness".  "Truthiness" is having an outward appearance of being correct, with an underlying shaky foundation.  I believe that I was taken in by the "truthiness" of the following:

This month's meeting of the Michigan Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) included a presentation on the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC). I learned some new things about how things really work in the world of education.

1. The Michigan Department of Education can only flesh out policy.  It cannot force districts to do anything that is not a matter of law. Because Personal Curriculum options are written into policy as an option (in other words, a school district may offer...) there is nothing to make a district offer a Personal Curriculum as an option.

Now, I believed that I had been corrected; I had been misinformed that districts must offer a Personal Curriculum, and this presentation corrected that bit of misinformation.  And so, to soften the blow to readers, I wrote the following to show that there were many ways to achieve the end of making the Michigan Merit Curriculum more "user-friendly" for students with learning disabilities:

2.  The Personal Curriculum option was envisioned as one of a number of ways to help students with IEPs achieve the needed credits for a diploma.  Other options include: academic content embedded in career and tech education classes, academic courses offered in alternative formats (online courses, self-paced courses offered with online and face-to-face components, courses featuring multiple representations of the content, etc.).

3.  The Personal Curriculum was seen as one component of a range of options.  For students with IEPs, it was seen as a way of documenting modifications to the requirements for attaining a diploma, in recognition of the impact of an individual student's disability on learning in a particular area of academic content.

...and in recognition that not everyone's Educational Development Plan (EDP) would list "theoretical physicist" as their career goal--requiring a high level of achievement in math, science and technology.  The EDP might list "house painter" as a career goal, which might not require as rigorous a curriculum in math or science, even though it might be a good idea to have some solid knowledge of business management, financial planning, cost bidding, materials estimation, and small business tax laws.

4.  Once a diploma is granted or a planned program is achieved, a student still is exited from high school.  Therefore, it may be to a student's advantage to take a longer time in high school to achieve the un-personalized curriculum, in order to take advantage of career-readiness opportunities.

... and here I was thinking of the "late bloomer" who might not have the foggiest idea of what she wanted to be in life, but by taking her time to complete all the requirements of the MMC, would have more options as she entered college.

So, if you ask for a Personal Curriculum for your child, and the school district says they don't offer a Personal Curriculum for students with IEPs, that may be true.  (At least in the opinion of some MDE consultants...but read on).  However, it might be worth your while to encourage the district to consider a Personal Curriculum for your child, if there is data on the impact of your child's disability on academic learning. This data could support needed modifications to an area of the curriculum in order for your child to succeed. ...especially, if your child's career goals may make other areas of learning more important than the standard MMC.

However, if your district says "No", you may also ask the district to explain what they are doing to support the graduation of all students.  If there are alternative courses to help students master content, these should be available to your child, as well.  School districts are still expected to show that they are improving graduation rates, and face a variety of consequences for failing to maintain or increase those rates.  In addition, the State uses the test scores that virtually all high school students in Michigan take to evaluate school effectiveness.  Schools with a record of low scores are likely to be changing what they teach and how they teach it to increase those test scores. Finally, if other district students have been offered the Personal Curriculum as an option, you may be able to appeal ...or legally question... the refusal of a district to consider a Personal Curriculum on the basis of equal opportunity.

This is not a static conversation.  As the state gains experience with a highly prescriptive, outcomes-based curriculum, there may be more and more unintended consequences to be seen.  And, there may be improvements in the preparation of all students to meet the challenges of a rigorous high school curriculum.

Again, this is not a static conversation.  I re-read the box on page 2 of the Parents Guide to the Personal Curriculum: Focus on Students with an IEP:  "Districts MUST offer the PC option and respond to all PC requests but are NOT required to approve all PC requests." I'm pretty sure that MUST still means "is required to".  So, I learned something from "learning something new"--and that is to make sure that you have your information straight when you make a presentation.  I'll be sending a note to all people listed below, to make sure that "MUST" means what I think it means...and not "may".  It's not that I have anything invested in proving someone wrong, but in making sure that I don't misinform families when I make statements about the Personal Curriculum as an option.

In the meantime, if you are interested in becoming better informed about the Michigan Merit Curriculum, the Personal Curriculum option for students with IEPs, and the implications of achieving or not achieving a diploma, here are some additional resources for you to use:

• Personal Curriculum Network (where personal curriculum liaisons share information). To gain access to the Personal Curriculum Network, use this link
• ACTpoint Michigan (a site most districts use to identify key curriculum objectives for a Personal Curriculum)

• General Personal Curriculum questions:

Gregg Dionne
Alternative Education Consultant,
MDE Curriculum and Instruction
Phone 517.241.6895

Mary Head
Department Analyst
MDE Curriculum and Instruction
Phone 517.241.6895

• Students with IEP Questions
  

  Sheryl Diamond
  Policy Consultant
  MDE Special Education
  Phone: 517.335.0442

• Algebra II Questions
  

Dan LaDue
Secondary Mathematics Consultant
MDE, Curriculum and Instruction
Phone: 517.241.6895

For further information, please refer to earlier posts on this same blog.  And I hope to keep learning something new that will help families to make good decisions in concert with their children's needs.

MITS Freedom Stick--Making Computer Use More Accessible

Ira Socol, a colleague of mine who has been working on his Ph.D. at Michigan State University, has a theory--Toolbelt Theory--which he has been blogging on for several years at SPeEDchange, his blog.  He's currently working with Michigan's Integrated Technology Supports (MITS) on this possibility. The idea, which I am probably oversimplifying, is that people who need to have certain adaptations made in order to access content on a computer, should be able to carry their tools with them. In essence, the tools, stored on a USB flash drive, would allow them to customize any computer to their needs. He's currently working with Michigan's Integrated Technology Supports (MITS).

Picture of 3 flash drives. Source: secretarydpu.wordpress.com

Well, he's finally unveiled The MITS Freedom Stick, adapted and improved from a Scottish suite of applications stored on a flash drive. The MITS Freedom Stick is "designed to provide students with information and communication access on any computer using a Windows or Linux operating system."  The best part about this "toolbelt" is that nothing needs to be installed on any computer, it's all self-contained on a 4 gigabyte (4GB) USB flash drive which you provide (and can be purchased for under $20).  The applications can be downloaded for free, at the MITS website.  There are instructions for customization at the link, and there's room on the flash drive for storing the files created by the user.


This suite of tools became possible through a collaboration between MITS, the Regional Support Center – Scotland North and East, the Mozilla Corporation, and Mozilla Education.
With netbooks available for under $300, this brings basic computer accessibility down to an incredibly affordable range for students in upper elementary and middle school, and beyond.   What impresses me is that this means that there are few excuses for students with learning disabilities to be unfamiliar with the tools housed on the MITS Freedom Stick by the time they enter college. Parents and teachers will need to be prepared to become skilled users of these tools, to help reinforce their learning. The hope that I have for this suite of tools is that it will enable more students to become independent of others' help earlier, so that a less steep learning curve is required of them when they reach post-secondary education.

2009 Conference Keynote Speaker is 21st Century Learner

This year's theme for our conference is Learning in the 21st Century. In order to meet the needs of diverse learners, a broad range of strategies need to be engaged to enable access to the curriculum. Among these are the tools afforded by instructional technologies.

If you are looking for a real treat, Tuesday's keynote speaker at the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan 2009 conference and membership meeting will be Christopher Lee. Christopher is the author of two books, Faking It: A Look into the Mind of a Creative Learner, and What About Me? Strategies for Teaching Misunderstood Learners. These books are written with Dr. Lee's experience as a person with learning disabilities, and as a provider of accessibility tools to assist in overcoming barriers.

Picture source: http://www.christophermlee.com/

Computers and Assistive Technology Remove Barriers for State of Georgia Employee with Learning Disability

source: Microsoft Accessibility, case studies

If words were big sturdy objects that Christopher Lee could touch, heft, and climb over, he might have a lot easier time reading. But as flat symbols on a page, they confound him. A severe learning disability, called a cognitive processing deficit, affects his ability to read, write, and sound out words.

Through the growth of understanding about learning disabilities, the introduction of numerous assistive technologies, and the foresight of the state of Georgia, Christopher Lee has successfully surmounted the barriers created by learning disabilities and gained responsible and fulfilling employment.

A Long Road to Understanding

As a child growing up in Florida in the 1960s and 1970s, the experts were just starting to understand dyslexia. And Lee was in college before he was tested and pronounced to have a learning disability. "That was a turning point for me," Lee recalls. "I had heard the term 'learning disability' before, but I didn't want to admit that's what I had."

After his learning disability was identified in college, Lee received help through the Learning Disabilities Center at the University of Georgia. The folks at the Center taught him how his brain worked and what learning situations and tools could help him learn.

Computer Becomes Tool for Learning and Employment Opportunity

In his junior year in college Lee discovered computers. "I loved the keyboard; it took away that dreaded piece of dead wood—the pencil," he says. "The keyboard was tactile; I could feel it, I could connect letters with physical action." When letters appear on the monitor, they're far clearer to Lee than when he writes them down on a piece of paper. Spelling checkers cleaned up his frequent misspellings, and grammar checkers flagged muddled word distinctions. "The computer made a huge difference in my ability to learn," he says.

In 1994, Lee landed a job at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation as training director for a learning disability, research, and training grant. "That's when I really began learning how the state of Georgia helped accommodate people with disabilities."

State of Georgia is Trailblazer in Providing Assistive Technology Access for Citizens

Following the lead of the federal government, all U.S. states have created vocational rehabilitation and assistive technology programs. One state that has led the way is Georgia. Georgia is a trailblazer in ensuring that its citizens have access to the assistive technology needed to lead full and productive lives. The state's Assistive Technology unit has evolved over time. Currently, it has two branches—one focuses on equipping individuals with technology that will help them to work, and the other, called "Tools for Life", provides technology services to all Georgians with disabilities regardless of age or work status. Lee was introduced to Tools for Life while working at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Center for Rehabilitation, and it was here that he really learned about assistive technology.

Assistive Technology: A "Huge Help"

"Assistive technology products were a huge help to me, especially after the Internet came along," Lee says. In his current job as project director for Tools for Life, Lee uses a standard Windows-based PC outfitted with Texthelp Read&Write, which combines a screen reader, phonetic spelling checker, homonym color coder, word prediction program, word abbreviation program, and thesaurus. He also uses Dragon NaturallySpeaking for speech input, the ZoomText screen enlarger, and Inspiration Software's Inspiration visual thinking and learning software, a program that lets him draw his way to clear expression.

When he needs to read a lot of scanned documents, Lee uses the Kurzweil 3000 screen reading program, a high-end optical character recognition program that reads typed text and will even read definitions using a built-in dictionary. He uses the Soothsayer on-screen keyboard, which aids him in navigating his way to correct word choices and spelling. Lee also uses the accessibility options in Microsoft Windows 2000 and the Microsoft Office 2000 suite, taking advantage of the enlarged icons and color features.

"Assistive technology vendors are starting to see that there is a huge market for individuals with learning disabilities in addition to sensory disabilities. Because cognitive disabilities are invisible, it's easier for individuals to fake it or deny the existence of the disability. They end up falling into the welfare system because they don't understand their challenge, or what technology exists to help them," Lee says.

But the state of Georgia is making great strides in preventing this loss of human and economic potential. Tools for Life and other state of Georgia-sponsored programs are increasing access to assistive technology for Georgia's 1,700,000 citizens with disabilities.

Here's a video of Christopher Lee, talking about Microsoft Accessibility.

Picture source: Microsoft Enable website

The Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan 2009 Conference will be held on November 16 and 17 at Kellogg Conference Center on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. To download the brochure for the conference, or to get more information click on the links provided. SB-CEUs will be available. Teen and family conference scholarships are available by contacting ldamich@sbcglobal.net or by calling 1-888-597-7809. Register before November 1st for a discount on the registration fee.

Library Services Threatened

I went online to reserve some books and other materials at my local library branch and discovered this announcement on the home page of the Ann Arbor District Library (my letter to my representatives in the Michigan Senate and House follow):

AADL: Pittsfield Branch (my branch), Source: AADL.org

AADL Library Services Threatened by Governor's Executive Order
to Abolish State Library

On July 13, Governor Granholm issued an Executive Order abolishing the Department of History, Arts and Libraries, as part of her effort to reach a balanced budget for the next state fiscal year. It is understood and accepted that hard decisions must be made, and that all departments of state government should be expecting to find savings and efficiencies.

It is not clear how abolishing the department dedicated to promoting Michigan history and the arts, and supporting all libraries in Michigan will result in significant savings; the Governor has indicated that there is an unfunded plan to move the collections to repurpose the State Library building. Library services, when separated or isolated from a larger system, and placed in a bureaucratic environment, will wither.

Governor Granholm Source: Michigan.gov

How will this proposed plan affect you? The State Library administers the services of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. AADL is a sub-regional service provider and has been since February of this year. The plan as proposed moves the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped from the Library of Michigan to the Commission for the Blind. It is not clear if any funding will follow the move, and the Commission is facing the same cuts as all other state departments and agencies. If services from the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped statewide are to remain stable and funded, the Governor, and our legislators, should be made aware that the proposed move is a threat to its existence.

The Library of Michigan also administers the group purchasing of databases that are made available to all libraries statewide for reduced costs. Any library cardholder or Michigan citizen with a valid driver’s license can access those databases from anywhere in the world. If the resources of the Library of Michigan are dispersed or eliminated, and if the State Aid to Libraries allocation is reduced, then access to these databases will disappear. Only the larger, most affluent communities will be able to consider locally funding these resources. Even at AADL, continuance of the currently available set of resources will not be possible.

Source: Michigan Electronic Library

The very popular statewide interlibrary loan program via MeLCat is also administered through the Library of Michigan, and paid for through a match of State Aid allocation with Federal funds. Each $1.00 of state funding for this service is matched with $.50 of Federal funding, and the total to fund this statewide delivery service is in the millions of dollars. This service is also threatened if the Library of Michigan is abolished, and State Aid is reduced.

It is an irony that in a time when all are calling for efficiency, resource-sharing, consolidation of services, and collaborations to save and find money, a state institution that has led statewide programs that work for the benefit of all Michigan citizens, and which help to provide the critical tools needed for our workforce to reinvent itself, is threatened because someone has the very uncool and uninformed notion that libraries are obsolete (sic).

The Ann Arbor District Library opposes Executive Order #2009-36, and supports funding of State Aid to Libraries at the current level of $10M.

Josie Parker, Director

Josie Parker Source: aadl.org

Here's my letter to State Senators and Representatives, and my hope is that you will also write.

September 3, 2009

I am the current President of the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan, and an ardent supporter of the resources from the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. While there are many new technologies that have made print text increasingly accessible to the blind and dyslexic, we also need to maintain some of the "lower tech" resources for people who lose their vision later in life, or, through injury, become unable to process print visually. For these reasons, I believe that we need to continue funding the services of the Michigan Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, and its local outreach services at the AADL.

In the field of education, teachers are under a great deal of pressure to provide "scientifically proven, research-based" instruction to ensure that all children are successfully learning. The MeL has significantly improved access to education journals that enable teachers to continue to update their practices without incurring the prohibitive costs of either subscribing to these journals or joining multiple organizations in order to access these journals. In Michigan, especially, if we are to realize the visions espoused by our leaders to bring 21st Century Learning to all of our children (and adults), the loss of access would be tragic.

Finally, the HAL has been a marvelous resource for teachers in Michigan as they help their students discover Michigan's multi-faceted past (part of the required curriculum in Michigan), and connect it to our much-hoped-for bright future.

Efficiency and consolidation of resources is one thing. Elimination of resources is another. I hope that the Governor understands the value of the resources under HAL, and keeps access open, even if rearranged.

Kathleen Kosobud

President, LDA of Michigan

www.LDAofMichigan.org

The Governor has proclaimed November Learning Disabilities Awareness Month. Please support accessible text for all kinds of readers, and accessible education for all kinds of learners.

odiogo

We frequently talk about finding ways to make text more accessible to our members. I know that we have odiogo on this site. How does this work and where can we find more information? Would this be something to add to our website somehow and post our newsletter or parts of it to address this possible need?