If the haste to produce marketable digital materials results
in little or no attention to broad usability, it is possible that
the move to digital materials will create new barriers to
access, participation, and achievement for these students.
the school’s curriculum adoption committee, the math teacher knew that the
publisher of the math textbook had an
online resource with a speaker icon
on each page that read the content
aloud. She showed everyone in her
sixth grade classes, including Dylan,
how to use the publisher’s online resources. A;er that, Dylan completed
his math homework by reading along
with highlighted text and listening to
recordings of the questions he was to
answer before he did the calculations.
For Dylan, using the online version of
the textbook, which let him see and
hear the content simultaneously, reduced the amount of time he spent on
homework from two hours to a more
reasonable 30 minutes.
For Dylan and many students like
him, a technology-rich educational
environment can be of enormous ben-
e;t. Flexible digital materials provide
unparalleled opportunities to gain the
information students need to achieve
curricular goals. When given the sup-
port they need to develop knowledge
and skills in the use of digital materi-
als, technology-savvy teachers can
integrate digital text and other acces-
sible formats into classroom routines
and activities in ways that generally
do not require major shi;s in their
instructional practices.
AIM for Students with Disabilities
Provisions in the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA),
the U.S. special education law, require
state and local education agencies to
ensure timely provision of specialized
formats (braille, large print, audio,
and digital text) of printed materials
to elementary and secondary students
with disabilities who need them.
Students who use AIM must meet
the same high-stakes content stan-
dards as their peers and need the same
information that teachers present in
print materials they use across the
curriculum. ;e content in the spe-
cialized format is the same as the con-
tent in the printed material; the only
di;erence is the format in which AIM
materials present the information. In
other words, students using AIM have
access to exactly the same content as
others in the class but use di;erent
strategies for acquiring the informa-
tion. ;is is in contrast to alternative
materials, which address the same
topic but have been modi;ed to in-
crease usability by students who have
di;culty understanding the content
presented in the materials that the rest
of the class uses.
