My son
was born with a 12 mega-base chromosome deletion on the long arm of his 7th chromosome pair. This means that a significant amount of DNA is missing from every cellular building block in his body.
The DNA on the 7th chromosome is known to play a key role in speech and language development, fine motor skills and sensory perception. As a result, his literacy skills have developed much slower then they would have without the deletion.
The hardest part of this scenario is not the deletion itself, or the speech and language delay, but the barrier it created for learning, communication and self advocacy. The school system he is part of is not currently set up to fully embrace tools and technology that can help him. I have been advocating strongly for assistive technology to be made part of his learning accommodations and finally, after three years of being a very squeaky wheel, it is starting to happen.
The change in his level of confidence, self advocacy, social skills and literacy skills has changed dramatically. One of the biggest triumphs came earlier this year, when at the age of 12, he started to read.
He now uses a chromebook at school with the Read&Write extension enabled, and can work independently. He has an iPhone that he uses the text to speech and speech to text feature (as well as many emojis) to communicate with me, his dad, his grandparents and friends.
Implementing assistive technology into school systems is not an easy change to lift. There are issues with funding, politics and resources. Educator curriculums still favour traditional “pencil to paper” techniques that simply don’t serve the needs of the diverse learner population. We are at a point where it is likely safe to say that the neurotypical child does not even exist anymore. And if this is the case, how can we continue to keep things as they are? Something has to be done.
I created READ ALOUD to raise awareness and fiercely advocate for the implementation of assistive and accessible technologies in the schools. We are living in a digital era and if there was ever “the right time” for change, the right time for this one is NOW.
Three easy ways to get involved.
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Learn about assistive technologies by visiting the resource links in the gallery.
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Talk to your school’s diverse learning team and ask for assistive technology accommodations.
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Talk to me, I’d love to connect.