Healthcare reform will be at the top of their list, he adds, because neither the state nor federal healthcare reform proposals include provision for rehabilitation services or assistive technology. Yet both are vital to people with temporary or permanent disabilities. For a person who's lost the use of his or her voice, an augmented communication device may be as important as a prosthetic limb. They are able to work. Equal access to employment is a prime mover for many who investigate adaptive technologies.
Education is another.
Less than a generation ago, note taking and double-checking assignments were luxuries for some people with disabilities. Special education teacher Bonnie Roth is blind, and recalls using non-adaptive equipment such as typewriters while in school. In her Federal Way classroom, Roth now teaches visually impaired students the ins and outs of computing with voice synthesizers and enlarged text systems. Other students with disabilities that inhibit speech use computers as communication boards. Elsewhere in a classroom of sighted students, a teacher shows pupils how to scan a text book.