Adaptive and Assistive Technology

According to the University of Washington's DO-IT Knowledge Base, assistive technology (AT) is "technology used by individuals with disabilities in order to perform functions that might otherwise be difficult or impossible." There are many types of assistive technologies, including screen readers, voice recognition software, and even special keyboards that have large keys or that are designed for use with one hand. This page focuses on the technologies that Penn State students use most often.

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Who Uses AT?

Although people with disabilities rely on their AT to do everyday tasks, many other people like to use similar features to customize their experience, printing lesson pages to read and mark up by hand, increasing font size, or hearing text read aloud, with or without visual highlighting. Penn State has adopted tools with all kinds of built-in accessibility features (such as Canvas, Office 365, and Google Workspace), as well as software designed to assist with learning (like Read & Write Gold), which may be beneficial to all students.

Accessible design means that content will work with different types of AT. It takes advantage of any built-in features that the course technology and materials provide. This page will discuss the types of AT that students use, whether personal to them, Penn State–provided, or built into Penn State software.

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Types of Assistive Technology

Screen Readers

Screen readers, used by people who are blind or have low vision, read the text on a web page aloud and provide keyboard options for navigating applications, websites, and page elements. Basically, this software will allow anyone full use of their computer without the need for a monitor or a mouse—as long as everything has been designed accessibly, of course.

Screen readers are designed to recognize HTML elements, such as headings, links, lists, tables, alternative image text (alt text), math code, and most punctuation, which is why formatting those elements correctly is so important—they enable screen-reader users to make sense of a page.

JAWS Links to an external site. is the most popular (and the most expensive) screen reader. It is sometimes used in conjunction with a refreshable Braille display. 

Watch the following video to see Michelle McManus from the IT Accessibility Team at University Park use JAWS and VoiceOver on her phone to do everyday tasks, including reading course content in Canvas.

Screen Reader Demo Video

Magnification

Used by people with low vision, ZoomText Links to an external site. is one of the most popular magnification applications with text-to-speech capabilities. Another is MAGic Links to an external site., created by Freedom Scientific (the same people who created JAWS). Read more about both tools on their websites.

Read Aloud and Other Tools

There are a number of other types of assistive technology, including free tools like the Immersive Reader and Read & Write Gold, which can be used to read documents and web pages aloud, customize the way text looks on a page, and even act as study aids with features like a picture dictionary and parts-of-speech highlighter. You can learn more about these tools and how to access them in the Resources module.

 

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Resources

For a full list of AT, see the Adaptive Technology and Services Links to an external site. page from the Penn State University Libraries.

References

Updated October 2024

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