Academic Accommodations
Accommodations and supportive services include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Extended time testing and testing in a reduced distraction environment
- Referrals to outside resources for diagnostics and documentation
- Consults and loaner program for assistive technology
- Note-taking services, such as permission to record lectures, access to professor slides, and/or access to a classmate’s notes.
- Interpreters
- Alternate format texts
- Reduced semester course load
- Accessible classrooms
- Individual supportive counseling
- Coaching with regards to academic strategies, time management, self-advocacy skills, and managing functional limitations.
- Consultation with faculty and staff
Assistive Technology
The AADR offers the following resources, assistive equipment, and software.
Bookshare
Bookshare is an online library of accessible ebooks for people with print disabilities, such as visual impairment, severe dyslexia, and cerebral palsy.
Bookshare is available for any student with the approved accommodation of accessible course materials.
Livescribe
The Livescribe pen is about the size of a large pen (5/8" x 6 1/8") and is equipped with a removable ballpoint ink cartridge, a microphone to record audio, a speaker for playback, a small display screen, an infra-red camera, and internal flash memory that captures handwritten notes, audio, and drawings. The user can choose to record audio in addition to the handwritten text. Recorded audio is kept indexed with the handwritten text-tapping on a written word starts playback of the recorded audio from that part of the recording.
The Livescribe pen is available for any student with the approved accommodation of recording class lectures. A student should not record lectures until they and the faculty member have received confirmation of the approved audio recording of class lectures. When approved, AADR has an inventory of Livescribe Pens to loan to students free of charge.
Read and Write Software
Read and Write (RW) is a screen reading app that makes the web, documents, and files more accessible for students by changing text to speech and is designed to improve reading comprehension. The program includes the following features:
- Text reading in quality computerized voices
- Editing tools such as a spell checker, word predictor, dictionary, word wizard thesaurus, and a sounds alike tool help users determine if they've chosen the correct homophones in their writing
- An MP3 converter to convert text into files for later playback in an MP3 player
- A pronunciation tutor, fact-finding tool, fact-mapping graphic organizer tool
- A floating toolbar that allows users to access Read & Write from within other programs such as word processing programs or PDF reader programs.
This program is available to any current student, faculty, or staff member at the college as a free download. The AADR office provides RW training, including the basic download and installation instructions.
Genio
Genio Notes from Genio is an interactive note-taking tool. It serves as an anchor for recording, reviewing, and interacting with class lectures. Genio Notes visualizes audio by creating bars of color that begin to grow when the instructor starts talking and end after each verbal pause. In essence, the lecture is "chunked" into manageable units of information without relying on written words. Genio Notes can incorporate an instructor's PowerPoint, PDFs, and other visual content for lectures, thus allowing students to record some basic annotation of the combined audio and visual either at that time or later after class.
Genio Notes recordings are more than just audio recordings created by a digital recorder, smartphone, or laptop alone. Genio Notes allows a student to focus on listening during class and to review the audio recording of the lecture later, annotating and highlighting important content. Genio Notes captures a lecture in manageable, visual "chunks," rather than a long tedious audio recording.
Genio Notes is available for any student with the approved accommodation of recording class lectures. A student should not record lectures until they and the faculty member have received confirmation of approved audio recording of class lectures.
For more information about these assistive technologies, please email AADR@davidson.edu.