With a Little Help from My Friends: Empowering Students with Disabilities with Commercially Available Technologies

Since October 2014, more than 10 million iPhone 6 have sold. USA Today published an article in 2012 stating that "half of U.S. homes own Apple products." It is very likely that some of your students already own an Apple device. Since they have them, let's put them to work. This session will introduce you to Apple's native accessibility features in iOS devices as well as in laptops and desktop computers. We will present and review the collaboration between disability services and IT/media services, where students' academic needs are addressed using technologies they already own themselves.

OUTCOMES: Receive a general overview of Apple product accessibility features (accessibility, text to speech, iBook app, iPad) as well as digital text formats (.pdf, .epub)