Help Me Help My Students: Exploring Assistive Technologies That Support Disabilities
With ever expanding numbers of students registering learning disabilities with disability support services, along with growing caution to protect disability rights, physical therapist and physical therapist assistant educators have encountered requests for accommodations and services that previously may not have been possible. of late, there has been significant proliferation of assistive technologies to support student performance and learning, therein challenging educators to confront and/or synthesize the myriad legal, ethical, and moral challenges associated with such change. simultaneously, most classroom and clinical educators lack formal training on the use and misuse of these supportive technologies. capitalizing on the combined expertise offered by the director of disability support services, university legal counsel, director of clinical education, and program director, this expert panel will engage attendees through an interactive tour of the many assistive technologies available to support students and offer comment on profession-specific opportunities and challenges associated with use of the various assistive technologies by physical therapy students. the session will also include discussion on disabilities that fall outside the reasonable protections of the law and how best to communicate those determinations to students.