What Assitive Technology is Available for my Child?

Consults, Screenings and Assessments

The AT specialist and augmentative/assistive communication specialist are available to recommend devices, resources, and strategies that may support students with disabilities or who are confronting learning challenges. The list below presents, from simplest to most intensive, options for considering assistive technology for your student:

  1. Consider barriers to learning. First, consider tools, resources, and strategies that are readily accessible (learn more at: Universal Design for Learning). If you decide to try something, collect data. If it is helpful. it should be adopted for the student as well as considered as an option for the class in general. Also,

  2. Request an AT informal consult, screening or assessment. If you still have need help considering AT, request AT help by completing an AT referral form. This will involve the AT specialists. Note that the referral can only come out of an IST, 504, or CSE. From simplest to most intensive, they are:

    • Informal consult: The AT specialist will meet with the teacher and discuss options. No report will be generated.
    • Screening: Only from IST, 504, or CSE. A quick consideration of needs and technology options. Good for most students who need AT input. An AT screening report will be generated.
    • Assessment: Only from IST, 504, or CSE. An in-depth assessment of the student's needs. Includes interviews, observations, and trials. Recommended for a student with wide-ranging, comprehensive needs.
      • An AT assessment report will be generated.

Assistive Technology Library

The Mamaroneck school district maintains an AT loan library. The library provides acccess to a range of assistive technology, enabling us to try out a variety of devices in order to find the right device to meet a particular student's needs, whether for reading, writing, planning and organization, or oral communication. In this way, students can find the device that is right for them, rather that being tied to a particular device just because it is the device that was purchased for them. If a device is a good fit, then it can be signed out to them immediately, without our having to wait for the purchase of a necessary device. Finally, the library serves as a professional development resource, enabling teachers to loan out and become familiar with devices.Many of these devices have been provided with the help of Mamaroneck Schools Foundation and SEPTA grants.

The AT library consists of a range of low to high tech devices. The following, in no particular order, is a sample of the library's content: