Accessibility Features on Google Chromebooks

All students deserve a chance to do their absolute best in any classroom. When a student has a disability, it can make daily activities seem impossible at times. Assistive technology is a tool that a classroom instructor can use to help that student feel and be successful in a classroom setting. As discussed in the text, the use of assistive and adaptive devices (along with other components) should be used to find the best solutions for all students. (Roblyer & Hughes, 2019)

My focus is usually on language arts and when I began looking I found that assistive technology can be used in a number of ways in that specific content area. Based on certain studies, students with reading disabilities are able to use assistive technology assimilate and communicate text to promote participation in a general classroom. (Nordstrom et al, 2018) The key is that using assistive technology allows for inclusive opportunities where students with disabilities feel confident that they can work with peers and collaborate in my classroom.

I currently use Windows 10 on a typical PC platform at home and in my classroom. The majority of assignments and work that my students perform on a daily basis involve the use of Google Classroom, so I am going to discuss some of the accessibility features that are add-on applications or that currently exist on the Google platform.

The first add-on that I use with my students (and definitely for myself) is called Mercury Reader. Mercury Reader allows you to basically clean up the page you are reading by removing ads, pop-ups, videos, etc. What you are left with is a clean version of the text or article you were attempting to read. Often times websites are so cluttered by junk that it makes it nearly impossible to tell where the article begins and ends. I share articles on a very consistent basis with my students and the use of Mercury Reader allows us to focus on the important stuff and not the distractions. For students who struggle with attention issues (ADD, etc.) this is a very helpful way to minimize their issues. In addition, this would benefit students with visual or cognitive disabilities by simplifying the screen. I personally use this tool as well because often the articles or pages I view for class suffer from the same overabundance of advertising and distractions that the ones I share with my students do.

Sometimes it's easier to talk about what you want to write than it is to type it out on a computer screen. In the past, I have had students use an application called SpeakIt! on Google but eventually, Google rolled out a Speech-to-Text product of their own that works really well. It is very easy to activate this tool and I purchased some cheap microphones that came with mini-tripods off of Amazon. This was a huge help in my classroom, as I work with struggling learners in language arts on a consistent basis. For students who struggle with writing (for cognitive or other reasons), it can often be easier to talk to the screen to get their ideas down than struggling through the activity with a pencil and paper. The quality of depth and writing vastly improved in my classroom when I  introduced this to students for the first time. I personally have used speech-to-text products both on my computer and smartphone to allow me to make notes or give feedback to students. If struggling with a keyboard is something that you do consistently, speech-to-text could be a huge benefit to you.

In addition to these add-on products, there are a number of features built into the Chromebooks that I use and make my students aware of. There are display settings to increase the size of the mouse cursor, zoom in/out on the page, change the brightness or contrast of the screen, or change the resolution. There are also toggles for sticky-keys, an on-screen keyboard, highlighting, word prediction, and speech-to-text. An additional option is the ChromeVox screen reader which assists visually impaired users in their use of the Google Chrome system. These settings can benefit students with a wide variety of learning disabilities in an educational and non-educational setting.


References

Nordström, T., Nilsson, S., Gustafson, S., & Svensson, I. (2018). Assistive technology applications for students with reading difficulties: Special education teacher’s experiences and perceptions. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 1-11. doi:10.1080/17483107.2018.1499142

Roblyer, M.D. and Hughes, J.E. (2019). Integrating educational technology into teaching: transforming learning across disciplines (8th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education Inc.