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School Is In The Air.



It is the time of year once more when students throughout the world are beginning to think about the return to school, college or university; it has been a strange time for everyone across the world. Many have had examinations cancelled and some will finish their secondary school and advanced level qualifications with an estimated grade. This has left some with a feeling that they have things that are unfinished; the social rites of passage associated with closing one chapter of life and opening another were absent too.

A Different Look to Learning .



The coming academic year is set to look very different for some of us. The UK government has pledged to get all children back in the classroom, even those with special needs and significant medical needs who have spent many months out of the classroom doing home-based education. For some of us it has been a case of saving lives, for others it was about containment and preventing viral spread. Parents and carers took on the teaching role with no training and little experience, all whilst trying to work from home. Some children have flourished with the extra one-to-one attention outside the competitive and judgemental environment that is often unwittingly created in the classroom. I know I would have flourished in a home-school environment. There are those who have struggled in lockdown, missing out on vital interventions to help them learn along with physical-based therapies to help with function in all aspects of their life. There are also parents who have realised that their children are struggling with academic life and are now faced with the challenge of finding ways to help them in an educational landscape that may forever be changed. As a society we have become rapidly acquainted with technology that has helped hold us all together and enable people to work and study,albeit in a way that feels socially removed or isolated.

Leaving It’s mark on us all.

The year 2020 is set to leave its mark, not only on world history but on the life-courses of young people who feel too vulnerable to return to classroom based learning. Some learning is set to remain entirely online, while other students are set to experience a blend of in-person teaching and lectures online. This setup is likelyto pose some particular issues for those with additional needs, particularly when one-to-one support is involved.



I am likely to remain an online student. It has been a new experience for me and a huge benefit is that I have worked truly at my own pace, heaven sent when illness hit me this year in a big way. I started to improve as the UK lockdown continued and began to study once again. I was able to access disability related support remotely at first and later in my home. My support worker worefull PPE and had a portable, perspex cubical in line with government guidance. Having multiple disabilities means that it is essential for me to have at least some in-person support to assist me with tasks of daily living,as well as my academic work, writing more generally and personal administration tasks (having a disability creates more admin than you may think). However due to both financial constraints, and my wishing to be as independent as possible, I also employ a variety of assistive technologies to help me be productive and successful and make the most of my available in person supported time.spported

Using a Smartphone and/or tablet

ubiquitous presence in modern life and they have certainly proved to be invaluable in keeping us all connected during the COVID-19 pandemic, when seeing family and friends was not safe. These tools can be essential for individuals with disabilities; they can be the difference between successfully completing a course and failing things all together. I personally use an IPhone and iPad, as I have found these to be the best at having integrated disability friendly features in their products. However, all Smartphones and tablets will contain features that could make both your study and everyday life easier.

I use an app called Perlego that has a wide range of text books accessed on a subscription basis, very like the Kindle app as it allows you to mark up and add notes tothe various subjects you are reading about. It has been very useful with public and university libraries being closed or with restricted access in the current times. It may also be useful when trying to restrict your exposure in places with a high footfall if your health condition puts you at increased risk of serious illness and complications if you were to contract COVID-19. In the UK, this group is referred to as clinically extremely vulnerable or the ‘shielding group’. The mass shielding of this group ended on 1st August with people only being asked to continue to shield under very particular circumstances, or in the event of a regional lockdown following a local spike in cases. If you have been in this group and are going to return to education soon it is important that you ask your student support or disability office what accommodations they may be able to offer you and what is in place to ensure you don’t miss out on course material and lessons. It is also important to note that your university may also post videos of lectures; this can help lessen the stress of missing out on vital course material and will help you get the best grade you can.

There comes a point in any type of educational study that you will need to undertake some type of research, this is particularly true when it comes to further and higher education such as college or university, when you will be producing essays, papers and reports. This being said it is good to know what is available to make the process as easy as possible to carry out. Reference manager software is a good start as you must always keep a note of the sources you use in the completion of your assignments to avoid plagiarism. There are some very good free ones, ‘Mendeley’ for example. You are able to input the reference data once and export it in a variety of different formats to meet the individual requirements of your university’s chosen referencing system.

Support with Access to Reading

not only books you may want to read for pleasure, many textbooks are available to buy in this format too. Having electronic textbooks allows you to highlight and mark up the book as you read in the same way many people do with their paper counterparts. This feature allows me to be much more independent, I am even able to make notes within the book using the speech to text feature on my iphone. I can also enable the inbuilt accessibility features on the iphone to read my book to me using a swipe action or toggle switch.

If I have to spend periods of time in bed, I can use Amazon’s ‘Alexa virtual assistant speaker’ to read compatible textbooks. It has an excellent electronic voice and has proved very useful to me in the past year. Additionally, I use it to make small lists and reminders to ensure I keep up with the medical care I need.

Along with text books available to buy, I have a membership to the ‘Bookshare’ service that is based in the USA. The service is available at no cost to students in the USA provided: they have low vision or are blind; they have a physical disability that inhibits their ability to complete reading related activities in the conventional manner; they have a learning disability such as dyslexia that significantly interferes with the ability to take in written information. In order to sign up for ‘Bookshare’you need to have a qualified individual countersign theapplication form to confirm that such difficulties are present. I am in the UK so it was a little more difficult to find a suitably qualified individual that they recognisedas such, as some of the terminology referring to those working with individuals with disabilities is different. I used my primary care doctor to certify my need. I also paid a fee as an international user, though some universities may absorb the cost on your behalf. It is always worth asking your college or university’s disability support office if they provide access to a ‘Bookshare’ account.

Writing support



I use a combination of equipment and software to support me when I have to do tasks involving the written word. I am able to physically write however, because I have cerebral palsy, my writing is laboured and does not look that nice, few people are able to read it. I tend to handwrite short notes, or at most a few paragraphs of a piece of work. It is, nevertheless, a skill I like to maintain. For the most part I use computer related technology to write.

As with handwriting, typing is physically slow. I like to type if I am in an environment where there is background noise or if I am watching TV. I tend to use a mixture of input methods on any particular day. Voice recognition software is something I try to utilize as much as I can; there have certainly been some fantastic steps forward in the past 20 years or so, when I first tried it, I found it next to useless. The user had to speak so slowly that anyone who required a ‘run up’ to a word had to take a deep breath. Today, most speech to text software can handle complete sentences and more and with the advent of noise cancelling headsets they can, in some circumstances, be used even in a classroom setting.

In terms of my own work I often go back to using the basic portable word processor like my ‘fusion writer’ or the ‘NEO 2’, both 16 to 20 years old. They don’t have the distracting element of being online and the ‘Neo’ in particular is durable with 700 hours service on just 4x AA batteries, this is much more practical when you are reliant on a device to complete work on time. I can take it to hospital with me and work in the waiting room, or if I am admitted. I can then download my document using an old printer lead. My ‘fusion’ device is also rechargeable, can read my work back to me and has a backlight and text prediction. However, it is not as robust and I tend to restrict it to situations when it is unlikely to be thrown in and out of a backpack or car.

One last thing! Remember, there are recording apps on most smartphones or ‘Olympas’ do a range of voice recorders that allow anything from basic recording of a class, to the ability to transcribe whole voice files into various text formats. The most important thing is to keep at it, even when you feel discouraged. It is never wrong to ask for help!

I had so many people telling me that I would never achieve academically, that education was beyond me! I am not that person anymore. At the start of a new challenge, or difficult time in general, I always like to remember a quote from Nelson Mandela who said, ” Judge me not by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down, and got back up again.” I fell many times over the years. So much so that I questioned if school was worth it, but in the end it was.

The writing environment and adaptations are key in changing how someone like me thinks of themselves, being without them may be the biggest barrier individuals with different learning needs face when in the classroom.