Episode 275: Sydney Elcan Birchfield: Assistive Technology Q&A with Chris Bugaj

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Sydney Elcan Birchfield, an OT Assistant working in the schools and a graduate student in Assistive Technology at George Mason University! Sydney interviews Chris about his career and approach to assistive technology, including what Chris’s focus on inclusive design, including more AT in the IEP, the need for AT considerations vs AT assessments, free AT professional learning resources, and more!

Before the interview, Rachel and Chris discuss one of Rachel’s clients who, prior to working with Rachel, was not making much progress using his AAC device. Rachel shares that, when an AAC user comes to her who hasn’t made progress, their system is often not set up for success - too few buttons, scrolling home page, etc. Rachel recommended a new AAC layout for her client with more language, but everyone in this client’s family was worried about moving to the new layout. They started with progressive vocabulary masking some words, and after 7 months, he is using the full layout successfully!

Key Ideas This Week:

🔑 Considerations are better than “assessment” because the time it takes to do an assessment can become a barrier - a team approach can be faster and more thorough.

🔑 The word “trialing” can be misleading when it comes to AT/AAC, because it sounds like a scientific trial. However, scientific trials control for all the variables before measuring change, but we can’t control for a large number of variables when exposing a student to different AT/AAC options. Even the choice of which option to put in front of a student first can change the user’s responsiveness to each option.

🔑 Inviting students into the considerations/assessment process helps us know what is motivating for them and if there are any roadblocks to AT (e.g. the student thinks using word prediction makes them look different) that can be discussed ahead of time.

🔑 We should remove the word “assistive” from assistive technology and just say “inclusive technology” or even just “technology”. It should be something that isn’t just for people with disabilities and special education, but technology can be used to redesign the experience for every student.

Resources From This Episode:

QIAT Listserv - https://qiat.org/qiat-list/

#ATchat Wedesdays at 8pm Eastern on Twitter - To follow the discussion, search “#ATchat” on Twitter, and to participate, include #ATchat in your tweet.