Abstract

The pace of change brought about by new technology has had a significant effect on the way people live, work, and play worldwide. Easy worldwide communication provides instant access to a vast array of data, challenging assimilation and assessment skills. Rapid communication, plus increased access to technology in the home, at work and in educational establishments, could mean that learning becomes a truly lifelong activity—an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant evaluation of the learning process itself. New and emerging technology has challenged the traditional process of teaching, learning and the way education is managed. Technology, while an important area of study in its own right, is having a major impact across all curriculum areas. Educating children with special educational needs would be cumbersome without the adaptation of equipment and materials owing to their peculiar circumstances. To this end, the availability of assistive technology for children with special educational needs becomes an imperative venture as it ameliorates the educational system’s ability to fulfill the needs of specific impaired students. Assistive technology allows children to perform various tasks which are impossible or more difficult to accomplish without it (enableall.org, 2012). They enable children with disabilities in a variety of ways to perform in different areas like education, learning, mobility and day to day activities. There is a range of assistive technology ranging from low tech devices like pencils to high tech equipments like screen reading software that could be used according to the level of disability and the task to be performed. The present study was conducted to find whether there is significant difference in availability of assistive technology in different types of hearing impaired schools. The data was collected from 63 hearing impaired school teachers and head of the institutions from various hearing impaired schools of Bengaluru. Survey method was adopted for the study. Checklist of Availability of Assistive Technology was administered Head of the Institutions and Teachers of hearing impaired schools for collection of data. Percentage analysis was used for analysis of data. The results show that private aided schools possessed most of the AT than private unaided schools, schools managed by parent’s associations and NGOs for hearing impaired children in Bengaluru. Keywords: Availability of assistive technology, Hearing impaired schools.