Learning Without Limits: Supporting Students with Sensory Needs

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Learning Without Limits: Supporting Students with Sensory Needs

Educational Psychology · Chapter 7: Individual Differences, Intelligence, and Inclusive LearningSection 7.9 · lesson 67 of 1009 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Sensory impairment, assistive technology, and designing for access from the start.

  • Describe how visual and hearing impairments affect learning
  • Explain Deaf culture and its educational significance
  • Identify assistive technologies for sensory impairments
  • Apply Universal Design for Learning to planning

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,156 words). Read along, or search it.

Individual Differences, Intelligence, and Inclusive Learning

Learning Without Limits

Most accommodation happens after the fact, and after a request. A student is identified, and then the lesson is adjusted for them. This section ends with a framework that inverts that order. But we begin with sensory impairment itself. First visual impairment, and the expanded core curriculum. Then hearing impairment, and three competing communication methodologies. Then Deaf culture, which reframes the whole question. Then the assistive technologies that make access possible. And finally Universal Design for Learning. That framework asks you to design for range before anyone requests it. It turns out to be both cheaper and more equitable.

Visual Impairment

A Range, Not a Category

Visual impairment is a range of conditions, not a single category. At one end is low vision. That means visual acuity between twenty seventy and twenty two hundred. Measured in the better eye, after correction. Legal blindness means visual acuity of twenty two hundred or worse. And then there is total blindness. In educational settings the category is broader still. It includes students who read standard print with difficulty. Students who use large print, or optical devices. And students who rely entirely on braille or auditory methods. So the planning question is never simply can this student see. It is what format does this student's learning actually run on.

Expanded Core

The Curriculum Behind the Curriculum

Educational planning here has to cover something extra. It is called the expanded core curriculum. Those are skills beyond standard academic content. Orientation and mobility, which is navigating the world safely. Independent living skills. Braille literacy. And assistive technology competency. Now here is the claim that people find surprising. These specialized skills are as educationally essential as reading and mathematics. Not enrichment, and not extras to fit in if there is time. Treating them as optional produces a specific failure. A student who is academically capable and functionally stranded.

Access

Making Visual Content Reachable

Access is a collaboration, and it has a specialist attached. Teachers of students with visual impairments work with classroom teachers. Together they ensure visual content is available in alternative formats. That means converting visual materials to braille, or to audio. It means providing tactile graphics for diagrams and maps. It means keeping the classroom navigable, and consistently organized. That last one costs nothing, and it is easy to break. Moving furniture without warning removes a map the student had memorized. And it means describing visual content out loud. Digital technologies have dramatically expanded what is possible. Screen readers, text-to-speech software, and refreshable braille displays. Along with magnification software.

Hearing

Three Communication Methodologies

Hearing loss also runs across a range. From mild, meaning difficulty hearing soft speech. To profound, meaning an inability to hear even amplified sound. Educational options reflect a genuine and unresolved debate. The debate is about communication methodology, and there are three positions. Oral and aural approaches prioritize the development of spoken language. Through amplification, listening therapy, and speech training. Total Communication uses a combination of methods. Sign language, spoken language, and written language together. Bilingual approaches prioritize American Sign Language as the primary language. With English literacy taught as a second language. These are not three efficiencies. They are three different commitments.

Deaf Culture

Two Ways of Seeing the Same Fact

To understand why that debate is so charged, you need one distinction. There is an audiological perspective on deafness. It treats deafness as a condition to be treated. And there is a cultural perspective, held within Deaf communities. Many members of the Deaf community do not view deafness as a disability. They view it as a cultural identity. An identity with its own language, its own history, and its own values. Under that view, a decision about methodology is not merely clinical. Decisions about communication methodology carry cultural dimensions. So do decisions about cochlear implants and educational placement. They carry familial dimensions too, which educators do not get to overrule. Approach them with sensitivity, and with respect for the family's perspective.

Assistive Tech, Visual

Four Technologies for Visual Access

Assistive technology is what makes much of this practical. Start with four technologies serving visual access. Screen readers, such as JAWS and NVDA, read digital text aloud. They enable computer and tablet access generally. A refreshable braille display converts digital text to braille characters. The student reads it tactilely, in real time. Text-to-speech software reads text aloud. It supports access to written material of any kind. And tactile graphics are raised-line representations. Representations of maps, diagrams and charts. Notice that text-to-speech appears twice in the source table. It serves visual impairment and reading disabilities alike.

Assistive Tech, Hearing

Three Technologies for Auditory Access

Three more technologies serve auditory access. An FM hearing system transmits the teacher's voice directly. It goes straight to the student's hearing aid. Video remote interpreting provides ASL interpreting through video technology. And captioning, known as CART, gives real-time captioning of speech. That is real-time captioning of spoken language, for classroom access. The FM system is worth understanding properly. It improves the signal-to-noise ratio. It sends the voice to a hearing aid or cochlear implant processor. So the problem it solves is not really volume. The problem it solves is the classroom itself, and everything else in it.

UDL

Three Principles, Designed In From the Start

Now the framework that ties the whole section together. Universal Design for Learning is a research-based educational framework. It was developed by CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology. It provides a blueprint for flexible learning environments. Environments that accommodate diverse learners from the outset. It draws on neuroscience research into three brain networks. The recognition, strategic and affective networks. From those three networks come three core principles. Multiple means of representation. Multiple means of action and expression. And multiple means of engagement. Each principle answers a different question about the same lesson.

In Practice

Design First, Rather Than Retrofit Later

Take each principle and ask what it changes in practice. Representation is about presenting information through various formats. Action and expression is about how students demonstrate knowledge. It means allowing them to demonstrate it in various ways. Engagement is about offering options that spark and sustain interest. And that sustain motivation over the length of a unit. Consider a biology teacher redesigning a unit on the nervous system. For representation, content comes in textbook, video and podcast formats. For expression, students choose a poster, a narrated slideshow, or an essay. For engagement, they choose a body system connected to a personal interest. Or connected to a personal health experience. Performance and satisfaction scores both improve significantly. Improve against the previous year's single-format delivery.

Why Proactive

Access Designed In Costs Less Than Access Added On

So what exactly separates UDL from ordinary accommodation planning? Ordinary accommodation retrofits the lesson after the fact. A student is identified, and then an adjustment is made for them. UDL proactively designs instruction to be accessible from the start. Accessible for the widest possible range of learners. Designing for access at the outset is more efficient. It is also more equitable, and for two specific reasons. First, it reduces the stigma of requesting an accommodation. Nobody has to ask for what the lesson already offers. Second, it reaches students with no formal diagnosis at all. Students who simply struggle with traditional single-format instruction. UDL originated in the context of disability access. Its principles remove unnecessary barriers for everyone.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Learning Without Limits: Supporting Students with Sensory Needs

What is the expanded core curriculum for students with visual impairments?
The expanded core curriculum covers skills students with visual impairments need beyond standard academic content: orientation and mobility for navigating safely, independent living skills, braille literacy and assistive technology competency. These skills are considered as educationally essential as reading and mathematics, not optional extras. Neglecting them can leave a student academically capable but unable to function independently.
What is Deaf culture?
Deaf culture is the view, held within many Deaf communities, that deafness is a cultural identity with its own language, history and values rather than a disability to be treated. This contrasts with the audiological perspective, which treats deafness as a condition. Because of this, decisions about communication methods, cochlear implants and educational placement carry cultural and family dimensions that educators should approach with respect.
What assistive technologies help students with visual or hearing impairments?
For visual access, common tools include screen readers such as JAWS and NVDA, refreshable braille displays, text-to-speech software, magnification software and tactile graphics for maps and diagrams. For hearing access, FM systems send the teacher's voice directly to a hearing aid or cochlear implant processor, improving the signal-to-noise ratio, while video remote interpreting provides ASL and CART provides real-time captioning.
What are the three principles of Universal Design for Learning?
Universal Design for Learning, developed by CAST, rests on three principles: multiple means of representation, or presenting information in varied formats; multiple means of action and expression, or letting students show knowledge in different ways; and multiple means of engagement, or offering options that spark and sustain interest. Unlike retrofitted accommodations, UDL builds access in from the start, reducing stigma and reaching students without a formal diagnosis.

About the Educational Psychology course

How many college credits is Educational Psychology?
Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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