Tools for Student Life
Accessibility Considerations Guide for Georgia Schools
Students with disabilities face a number of challenges in today's educational system. Despite being guaranteed a fair and equitable education under the IDEA (1975), we find that students with disabilities graduate high school at a rate of 63%, 20% lower than their peers (2014). The state of Georgia was among five others that graduated students with disabilities at a rate of less than 50% compared to their peers. Despite a desire for improvement, most schools face obstacles in available teachers, specialists, and time to dedicate to solving the unique problems for each student. Many times, the burden of helping these children is placed on teachers, parents, or administrators who often do not have the extensive expertise, time, resources, or general awareness of tools, resources, and remediations that are available. How then do we help overburdened schools assist some of our most vulnerable students?
The Tools for Student Life project is the Capstone project of Phillip Roberts in the MS HCI program at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) in partnership with the Georgia Department of Education (GDOE) - Georgia Project for Assistive Technology (GPAT) and AMAC Accessibility (A research center of GIT). We have researched the existing processes, tools, and resources utilized by the GDOE interviewed accessibility and education experts and used this knowledge to create solutions to aid the processes of student accessibility considerations.
Students in Georgia Tech's interdisciplinary MS in Human-Computer Interaction program do multiple group class projects, and a capstone individual project. Some projects are presented as part of other labs listed here; others are showcased in the MS-HCI Project Lab.
The two-year program spans four schools: Industrial Design; Interactive Computing; Literature, Media and Communications (Digital Media Program); and Psychology. Approximately 50 new students enroll each fall semester.
