Two weeks ago, a man named Chris Waddell arrived at the summit
of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa.

A paraplegic athlete from Park City, Utah, Waddell became the first
in his condition to reach the summit of the 19,340-foot peak.

In addition to the courage, vision and mental and physical strength
he needed to achieve that goal, there was something else that
helped propel him to the top of the largest free-standing
continental mountain on earth; something that could only be found
in the Bitterroot.

A free text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word

For people with reading and writing difficulties, having text reinforced by hearing it read aloud can be very useful.

“Nobody Is Too ‘Anything’ to Read, Write or Communicate”

The late news broadcaster Walter Cronkite catalogued the ills of the world every night for television viewers. But through the cataract of daily despair he always glimpsed a reason to hope, to be joyful about the possibilities of the moment and beyond. For the tens of millions of viewers who watched his coverage of the first lunar landing 40 years ago that enthusiasm reached out from their TV sets, when, at the moment of human touchdown on the surface of the moon, Cronkite shed his cloak of objectivity and exuberantly exclaimed, “Oh, boy!”

Despite the many daily challenges that confront them in their sphere, members of school district assistive technology teams nationwide share Cronkite’s enthusiasm for the vast potential of technology to change the lives of individuals with disabilities.

Sure, the struggles AT team members face are daunting: lack of time and money; too many pre-service and in-service teachers without sufficient AT training; funding-strapped districts that are sometimes reluctant to approve teams’ AT recommendations for individual students; the reluctance of some districts to accept AT’s viability, and a continuing belief in a few education quarters that some children with disabilities may never learn to read and write. Fortunately, among district AT team members – speech-language pathologists (SLP’s), occupational therapists (OT’s) and others – the technology flame burns brighter than ever. Their enthusiasm still bubbles. Their thirst for information about the latest technology developments that may aid their district’s children is unquenched. And their conviction that no child is too disabled to read or write remains not only ironclad but often translates into a hard-won happy reality for the children with whom they work.