New book on role of technologies in assisting disabled students

I’ve always thought that computing educators should be at the cutting edge of the use of technology for all forms of education, including adaptations for students with disabled.  We have the most flexible medium for teaching and for teaching about — we teach about computation using computation.  Richard Ladner is a world-leader in making CS accessible to disabled students, and his NSF BPC Alliance on AccessComputing provides resources to help with that adaptation.  I’d love to see more computer scientists building technologies to help us teach computing to more people and better.

Assistive technologies can include anything from electronic tools for time and materials management; hearing aids and amplification devices for those who are hearing impaired; glare-reduction screens, note-taking devices and screen magnifiers for visually impaired students; voice-recognition software that can turn the spoken work into type on a computer screen so students suffering from paralysis may take part in discussion. Technology is even advancing so much that severely disabled students can now control their computers by simply following letters and commands on the computer screen with their eyes. The term “eye tracking”, the process of measuring either the point of gaze (“where we are looking”) or the motion of an eye relative to the head has gained a strong presence when discussing applications of assistive technologies.

via IGI Global – Educational Technologies Blog > No Two Students are Alike – Technologies that Embrace Disabilities.