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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
MEGAN MUSSANO: Hi, this is Megan Mussano, and I’m an assistive technology facilitator and speech pathologist in the Chicagoland area, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 203 of assistive technology update. It’s scheduled to be released on April 17 of 2015.
Today my guest is Megan Mussano who is a speech therapist and talks about communication strategies for students with multiple needs, very cool interview. Also we are going to give you a preview of our relaunched podcast. It’s called accessibility minutes. And we have a new post, Laura Metcalf who is oh-so-cool and going to tell you about some really great accessibility stuff.
We have nine accessibility tips for MOOC platforms and a recent Department of Justice decision related to that; some hands on information with Facebook accessibility; and Audrey Busch gives us our monthly legislative update to let us know what’s happening in Washington DC.
We hope you’ll check out our website at the www.eastersealstech.com, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject.
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So I’m excited to share some interesting news: we are relaunching our accessibility minutes podcast. Accessibility minutes is a 60-second piece of information each week about us as a technology that we did for a long time and has been on hiatus. But Laura Metcalf, who is our social media content specialist and our number one blogger here at the INDATA Project, is relaunching this show and doing it her way. So it’ll come out every Friday on the same day as assistive technology update, and here is a sample of that one minute podcast.
LAURA METCALF: Hey there! Welcome to Accessibility Minute, your weekly look at Assistive Technology–those clever tools and devices designed to help people who have difficulties with vision, mobility, hearing or other special needs.
Welcome to the re-launch of the Accessibility Minute podcast! My name is Laura Medcalf and I am so excited to announce that I am the new host of this weekly 60-second podcast airing every Friday! In each podcast I will cover everything accessibility—from Apple devices to services for individuals with disabilities. I’ll cover a variety of topics for individuals who face challenges in vision, mobility, hearing, or other special needs. This podcast is designed with you in mind! There will be a transcript for every Accessibility Minute podcast making sure it’s accessible to all!
For more information, to read our blog or to drop us a line, visit EasterSealsTech.com. That was your accessibility minute for this week. I’m Laura Medcalf with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads, in Indiana.
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WADE WINGLER: So dial up iTunes or Stitcher or however you get your podcast and make sure you subscribe to Laura Metcalf’s weekly accessibility minutes. Don’t miss it.
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There’s lots of news these days about the Apple watch. We’ve got a little sneak preview here. There is an article in recode magazine that was written by Lauren Good. She had the opportunity to wear the Apple watch for a week, and she goes through the technology, whether it’s easy to use, navigation, what’s that like, how it worked as a biofeedback sort of monitor, how third-party apps are still a work in progress, and some of the changes in the emerging. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to the recode blog where you can read more about the person’s spirits but having an Apple watch on her wrist for an entire week. Check our show notes.
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My wife will tell you that I spent a little too much time on Facebook these days. But I found an article here on AFB access world magazine’s website where Bill Holten talks about social media and accessibility, and specifically he gets into Facebook accessibility for users with visual impairments and what Facebook wants you to know. Fascinating article that talks about some of the things that Facebook is doing in terms of reaching out to people who use assistive technology and trying to be proactive about making the accessibility there a little bit better. The article includes some high level kind of stuff and also talks about some really ground-level sort of things. In fact, they talk about some of the access keys. So for example, did you know that within Facebook, the home is number one for the access key? The timeline is number two. Friends is number three and so on. And then there are some shortcuts like scrolling through the newsfeed stories is a shortcut J. Scrolling backward is K. See more of the selected story is Enter. Or post a new status is P. So there are a dozen or more of the shortcut keys that are listed right in the article, as well as other information including the fact that at least at the time of publication Facebook is looking to hire an accessibility specialist. There is a link in the article to that particular job posting. I’m going to pop a link into the show notes over to AFB.orc and or ask is world magazine in April where Bill Holten talks more about Facebook accessibility. Fascinating stuff, check our show notes.
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If you’re not familiar with the term EdX or MOOC, you want to pay attention to the story. MOOC is a massive open online course. EdX is one of the biggest ones out there. Recently the Department of Justice has entered into an agreement with the folks over at EdX to make sure that their platform is more accessible. There are over 300 courses available and people learning all sorts of good stuff over on EdX, but in the past that hasn’t been fully accessible. The agreement requires that the EdX folks identify a content accessibility expert and also has a nine point plan that is going to be required. There are some pretty good accessibility steps. One of the things they talk about is making sure the website, the mobile application, and the learning management system is fully accessible within 18 months. So they’ve got a time-limited plan there. They want to make sure that the CMS, which is the backend system, permits the posting of accessible content. They need to educate the people who are putting content on their about best practices for making sure that those online courses are accessible. They need to have the accessibility coordinator have a policy and also get feedback from the users of the EdX system. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to this eCampus News article and you can learn a lot of details about the outcomes of this agreement and also the nine accessibility steps for these MOOC platforms. Check our show notes.
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It’s time for on the Hill with Audrey. Audrey Busch is the director of policy and advocacy for the Association of assistive technology act programs. In her update, she lets us know how the power of politics is impacting people with disabilities and their use of assistive technology. Learn more about Audrey ATAPorg.org.
And just a quick editorial note here. Because we had our assistive technology Man Cave episode last week, Audrey segment was actually recorded last week but is airing this week. So when she talks about Congress not being in session, they are back in session now. With that little note come here’s Audrey.
AUDREY BUSCH: This is Audrey Bush, policy Dir. for the Association of assistive technology act programs, coming to you with your monthly Washington update. While Congress is currently out of session, prior to taking this two-week recess, both chambers passed a budget resolution putting a feather in the GOP’s hat showing they still have the ability to control their caucus and get something done in Washington. Both the House and Senate GOP leadership teams are attempting to clear a path forward for spending levels in fiscal year 2016. Both chambers’ budget resolutions stayed within the Spending levels imposed by the budget control act of 2011 and used budgetary loopholes to increase defense spending. The next step in the process is for the Senate and House to hammer out the differences in their proposals and pass a final budget resolution by the April 15 deadline. It’s important to note that these budget resolutions never become law and are never signed by the president. Therefore they provide merely an outline for the house and Senate appropriations committees to follow when allocating spending levels to the various 12 appropriations subcommittees that make funding decisions for every federal agency. There is still a long road in the budget process to determine a final fiscal year 2016 budget, and there’s still an opportunity to avert sequestration which would impose across-the-board cuts to every federal program. Also required by the budget control act of 2011. Most likely, however, we will see the appropriations committees in each chamber began to work on their appropriations bills before we see any movement from Congress to begin work on averting sequestration, which would be very detrimental to every federal program including those that impact people with disabilities. So stay tuned for future updates with will track the progress Congress makes to develop a fiscal year 2016 budget and also, hopefully, avoid sequestration.
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WADE WINGLER: I get a lot of feedback from our audience about augmentative and alternative communication. Although we like to cover some of the high tech cutting-edge technology when it comes to assistive technology, we get a lot of requests for people who are interested in practical information and how does this stuff work in the real world, and specifically, how does this work in the classroom. I’m excited to have as our guest on the show Megan Mussano who is a speech pathologist in the K-12 setting and recently has had an article or two published about using communication and practical strategies for increasing communication and success for students with exceptional needs. Megan and I have spent the last little bit of time trying to get our Internet connection worked out, so we are a little frustrated right now. Megan, we are finally on the air and online together. How are you today?
MEGAN MUSSANO: Fabulous. Thanks for having me.
WADE WINGLER: Good. Thanks for working with us to get the commission going. Thank you for spending some time with us, talking about communication for students with multiple needs. Let’s start a little bit with you telling us about your background, you becoming a speech therapist and how you ended up in the classroom and why are you interested in assistive technology.
MEGAN MUSSANO: Sure. Some could say that I am the new generation within that new generation of assistive technology, because I am new to the field fairly. I’ve been a speech therapist for the past six years, but ever since I started going to school, I’ve been looking at assistive technology and communication. I got a great start going to the closing the gap conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it really piqued my interest there. So as my years went on, I applied and ended up doing a few presentations with closing the gap. I am here today because closing the gap then asked me to write an article about one of my presentations.
WADE WINGLER: So tell me a little bit about the article and some of the overarching themes that we are going to cover today.
MEGAN MUSSANO: It’s called practical strategies for increasing communication and success for students with exceptional needs. Like you said, this article really stems from the need for communication for all of our students. We know that low incident students only comprise about 1% of arts in the population, but they definitely take more than 1% of our attention. There is a lot of things we can do to really support them throughout their day, one of which is increasing the indication.
WADE WINGLER: So a lot of folks in my audience are working in the K-12 space, and many of them are speech therapist and totally get it. But I’m going to ask you to do a little bit of taking us to school on what do we mean when we talk about low incident disabilities and what do we mean when we talk about students with multiple needs? What are the like in your classroom?
MEGAN MUSSANO: These are students who have the one in 1 million disabilities, but also a lot of our students who have multiple disabilities combined. Typically, the students are nonverbal or limited verbal. Many of my students have maybe one or two signs that they can use, maybe just hit one switch. Some are wheelchair-bound. Some have physical disabilities and vision impairments, cortical vision impairments. I mean, really, you take a disability and pile it on to these poor kids, and then we are attempting to do the best we can.
WADE WINGLER: So we’re talking about the kids really do have multiple needs and the more complex situations.
MEGAN MUSSANO: Yes.
WADE WINGLER: So when we are talking about augmentative medication, can you tell me about some of your favorite strategies and some of the common goals that you have when you’re working with these kiddos?
MEGAN MUSSANO: Definitely. Really what my goal is, I’m the assistive technology facilitated from a school district, along with the speech therapists, so I guess my kids are little spoiled that they get the best of both worlds. But surely, we need assistive technology to support the students because their natural means of indication just aren’t functional, since many of them don’t have any natural forms whatsoever. The things I want to talk about our how do we really use a single speech generating device, like a Big Mack or a single quick talker? How do we use a step-by-step like a sequencer? How do we use a four cell, eight cell? And what other things can we do to come in the world of assistive technology, support them throughout the day? Not just communication, but play, how do we teach the students to play just like every other student does?
WADE WINGLER: I think is a great topic, because I have all kinds of augmentative medication and simple Aug-Com devices in our lab here in Easter Seals, and we deal with them all the time. But I have a lot of folks who can’t understand how a Big Mack, for example, is a button that you push and it says something. Take us down the world of how the indication device is used and will get more complex from there.
MEGAN MUSSANO: What you have to start with is what do we want our student to say? What is the core vocabulary? What are those communicative functions of language? We don’t just want a student to say I want crackers. I want crackers. More eat. That’s just not true – it’s partial communication, but that doesn’t support the whole student. We really want our students to be able to initiate communication, terminate. They should be able to comment, request, reject, asked questions, provide information, express feelings. One of my favorites is direct the actions of others. It is so fun when one of our students who struggles with communication can actually tell someone else to go or stop or come here, go away. They get such a hoot out of controlling other people. So I really look at a lot of research about what are some of the initial words, like in typically developing tolerance, what are some of the first 20 words that they say? I also looked at Gail Vantatenhove’s research with the Pixon Project. She has a lot of core vocabulary. So I kind of did my own little meta-analysis looking at a lot of different research and looked at some of the great indication we can start with that’s truly impactful and gets that great cause-and-effect going and interaction with communication. So like a question said, the single message, what can we do with just one button that says one thing? I’ve created a list. I use some information from various sources. Of course, it’s great to say I am here or good morning. That’s the one I want when we do partner assisted scanning. We can stop. We can say hey, what’s up. Often I have, when I’m doing a speech group, I have each student with a bun in front of them that says my turn. They don’t always take appropriate turns, but we are working on that. But the nice part is that any point in time during my lesson, they can interject and request attention by saying my turn. That my turn gets them attention and interaction, and it really felt that cause effect. I hit this button, I get attention, which is really what we’re going for at that single message level.
WADE WINGLER: That makes a ton of sense. And I being too simplistic when I assume that as you move along the complexity of the device, you’re just doing more of the same kind of thing when you get to a step-by-step?
MEGAN MUSSANO: Well, the step by step, people cannot forget about this, but it’s actually one of my favorite tools to use, even with some of my higher functioning kids who are on dynamic displays. One of my favorite things to do with the step by step, we’ve actually purchased one for each of the students in our classroom, and we use it as a bridge between environments from school to home. So every day come when the day is done, we record on the step-by-step how the student’s day went, so that when the students go home, they can set a dinner with their parents and mom and dad can say, “Hey, how was school? And then Julie can say, “It was a great day. I had a lot of fun.” Parents then say, “What did you guys do?” Julie can say, “I went to art and I made a big mess.” You can really create such a great foundation and communication between the parents and the student. It’s really one of those great moments of joy because the parents are truly communicating with their student, and the student is really providing novel information to the parents at home.
WADE WINGLER: That makes a ton of sense. So where does it go from there?
MEGAN MUSSANO: Good question. I have been trained on the parents to record it back. So they send it in the backpack in our students talk about what they did at home during morning opening. But obviously, communication doesn’t start at a step-by-step. There really are so many other things you can do, such as telling knock knock jokes or reading a book, resetting parts to a recipe, delivering the morning announcements. There really are hundreds of things you can do with a step-by-step or a Big Mack, the single or sequence message one, when you think about it. The goal here is really just to use it more and more. Our students really deserve more than four switch hits a day. There is some research out there such as go for 150 communications a day. Linda Burkhart was say go for 200 medications a day. So really what we are going for is 100+ committee cushions a day. It’s our task as educators to find a way to help our student communicate 100, 200 times a day, with just a single message or a sequenced message output at that’s where the students capabilities are.
WADE WINGLER: As students kind of progress into more complex devices, you message for cell and eight cell devices, what does that look like and how does the approach change?
MEGAN MUSSANO: This is where I start to get into the core vocabulary, the functional words. When we get onto a to sell, I often like to do some opposites such as like and don’t like. This is a nice moment too, because when you give the opportunity for students to say like or don’t like, you are really giving them an opinion. They really are doing more than just requesting. We are empowering some of our nonverbal students to truly have an opinion, which is kind of exciting. We’ve also done some great things with poetry. Our students, they had to have access to the common core, or essential elements is often what we use. I don’t know if every state has it, but I know Illinois and Wisconsin do. We’ve been using that to access poetry to writing such as Valentine’s Day is or summer is, and then we have various words that match with that.
WADE WINGLER: That makes a ton of sense. Tell me some of your favorite tricks when you are working with kids as they progressed to this level to increase the utilization of the device and to really help them become more independent.
MEGAN MUSSANO: One of the keys is always access, as in I always have a switch of some sort out in front of my students. Rather it be saying my turn or break or hey come here, we always have something in front of them. Truly, one of the speech therapy techniques that we always use that the whole school is using for us is sabotage. Such as we are walking down the hall and oops, we stopped, and then our student has to say go. Or we are pushing on the swing and we stopped them. The student has to say go. Or we hand them their bowl if we have a student who can feed themselves, and there is no spoon, so they have to ask for help. Over and over again. But it has to be something that the student is familiar with where the sabotage can work. So that’s a great strategy to increase language. But truly just access, always having in front of them. Really, the way to help the student is, even if they are not selecting, let’s say if you have an eight cell device with a different core vocabulary words on it, and they selected the wrong one. You still respond to it. You still give them the cause effect that they have communicated. You can just support them to find the right picture. Or when you answer any way that they weren’t expecting come out until go back to the communication and try to find the correct word.
WADE WINGLER: Let’s say that we are dealing with a parent or teacher or even a speech pathologist who doesn’t have a lot of experience with working with this kind of technology, what’s your advice for people who are a little overwhelmed or can’t figure out where to start when they are talking about this kind of medication? What a good starting point? To be too often you hear people say just start with morning opening. Which, I guess for one or two days is fabulous. But recently, I’ve just been printing up little slides, little handouts of 10 things to do with each talker, to start those ideas flowing for the speech therapist. For example, instead of just helping the student to their locker and taking off their code for them, let’s put a step-by-step in front of them where they can say “Hey, open my locker for me. Can you take off my coat? What you think about my shirt? It’s a fancy one.” To really have the student leading that morning routine of locker versus just doing it for them. So it’s really a new way of thinking, of how can we get new condition into everyday situations. I find that brainstorming a few of those activities, and then I asked them to come up with one brand-new each week to try to add in more communication.
WADE WINGLER: That makes a great deal of sense as well. We don’t have a ton of time left in the interview. Tell me a story, without violating any kind of privacy with one of your students. Tell me a story about recently when a kid did something with communication that just really impressed you or one of your favorite times when the light bulb went on for you or the child.
MEGAN MUSSANO: I’m currently the speech therapist and assistive technology support for one of the multiple needs classrooms in our district. We have five students there and varying needs. One of the best times for me really was just what every single kid had a talker in front of them, and they were almost arguing with each other, requesting turned at the exact same time. When we were doing weather, we had a spray bottle. For some reason, getting sprayed with water and having an umbrella around is the most fun thing in the world. But really, with each student requesting it so quickly and purposely – and that’s what’s really exciting, is when you have a student going from just hitting the switch because it’s in front of them, and then all of a sudden after experiences and support and using that prompting hierarchy, you have a student who, for the first time, she would hit the step by step, listen to the whole statement that came out, and wait for your response before she did it again. Just learning that timing that we truly taught the student reciprocal communication just by using a step-by-step.
WADE WINGLER: That’s got to make it all worthwhile. That’s great. Megan, if you wanted to continue the conversation with you or reach out to you or learn more about the stuff, what would you recommend? Is there any contact information you would like to provide?
MEGAN MUSSANO: Certainly. I’m actually going to give out my email. The email will sound funny because it’s my maiden name. I just got married a few months ago. It’s mkgarrity16@gmail.com. I would also strongly suggest looking at the article that we wrote. It was actually in joint with my mom who is also a speech therapist, which is kind of fun to work together. But there are some great information on the state standards. There’s lots of information on adapting play to help support our students. And then a lot of other functional links to look for activities and to look for materials that we use in our multiple needs classroom. That can be found in the February/March issue of Closing the Gap’s online solutions.
WADE WINGLER: That’s February/March 2015, right?
MEGAN MUSSANO: Yes. It was just published.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. Megan Mussano is a speech pathologist and the assistive technology facilitator at her school district in the Chicagoland area. Megan, thank you so much for hanging out with us today and giving us some communication strategies.
MEGAN MUSSANO: Thanks. It was great being here.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Looking for show notes from today’s show? Head on over to EasterSealstech.com. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.