Running Head: Hearing, Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students Satisfaction With On-line Learning - Essay Example

Not only can computer technology facilitate a broader range of educational activities to meet a variety of needs for students with mild learning disorders, but also adaptive technology now exists than can enable even those students with severe disabilities to become active learners in the classroom alongside their peers who do not have disabilities. (Hasselbring, 2000) Technological accommodations often involve the use of assistive devices to help a student to communicate or to produce work output e.g. modified keyboard, a computer with a visual display and touch screen or with voice synthesizer, braillers for blind students, greatly enlarged text on a computer screen for a student with partial sight, radio-frequency hearing aids for students with impaired hearing etc.

Less sophisticated aids might include school-made communication boards for students without speech, or using symbol or picture card systems for communicating. Technology has also increased the mobility and independence of many students with severe physical disabilities. The specific needs of students with disabilities are usually identified in their individual education plans (IEPs). The IEP should be seen as the main source of advice of the types of differentiation needed by the students. (Westwood, 2003) Deaf and hard of hearing students have great difficulty with phonics as it is usually taught.

However, when they learn lip reading, this has a phonic basis in the speaker. If regular students are initially taught to spell phonemically, and the deaf and hard of hearing lip reading students are taught to write what they see in the same phonemic spellings, the two groups of students can communicate in writing thereby making joint educational experiences possible to some extent. (Ives, 1997)Introduction American Sign Language (ASL), the language of the deaf is not simply a translation of American English into hand symbols.

It is a totally different language, unique in the sense that enables American deaf people to read American English but communicate with each other in ASL. Reading different spellings of words or homonyms is less difficult for them because knowing how a word sounds does not confuse them. They work only from the context of the word in the sentence or paragraph. (Ives, 1997) Teachers have found that technological innovations can help level the playing field for special needs students and enable these students to succeed in the regular classroom.

Federal Law defines technology for students with special needs as "Any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities." (Amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, part A, 602, 1). It is clear from the above definition as to what extent it encompasses the needs of learning modern technology that has proven to be useful for improving educational options for students with disabilities.

When we talk about those students that face difficulty in learning online techniques and technologies, we mean to refer two categories of students. First,