Assessing Student's Needs for Assistive Technology (ASNAT)

Chapter 6 – Assistive Technology for Recreation …
Assistive Technology
For Recreation and Leisure
One of the most challenging tasks in education is to work with students with severe and profound
cognitive disabilities that leave the child functioning at a few months of age cognitively, regardless of
their chronological age. Recreation and leisure is often a focus area within the Individual Educational
Program for children with severe/profound cognitive disabilities. Because of this, the first Section of this
chapter is written with this population in mind.
Assistive Technology and Children with Severe/Profound Cognitive Disability
What can limit a child’s involvement in recreation and leisure? For the purposes of this chapter, the
limitations are divided into three general areas; (1) arousal and/or attention, (2) ability to physically
interact with equipment or objects in the environment, and (3) social or behavioral skills.
Sensory Planning for Increased Arousal/Attention
♦ Increased Arousal-When working with children who experience severe/profound cognitive
disability, getting their attention and keeping them sufficiently focused and aroused to attend to
things in their environment is the first step. When thinking about arousal/attention begin by
considering the following: How do sensory experiences affect this child? Are there some that are
preferred and should be utilized? Are there some that the child dislikes and should be avoided? What
sensory stimuli (e.g., lights, music, sounds, smells, perfumes, food, taste, touch, movement) produce
a consistent response in the child? That response may be an increase in arousal or attention or it may
be the opposite and indicate a sensory area to avoid. It is important to note the arousal state after
activities such as physical education or recess. Is the child in an increased attention state? If so, this
indicates that it was a good level of activity and stimulation that left the child in an aroused state,
when s/he will be most able to attend to a new activity or experience.
♦ Decreased Arousal-Conversely is the child who is in a “shutdown” response. If so this indicates the
activity was too stimulating and produced a sensory overload. Shutting down is the result of too
much stimulation. Unfortunately, we often interpret this response as a lack of interest or awareness
and INCREASE the stimulation, causing the child to further shutdown. The first task in assessing
this student’s ability to benefit from assistive technology is to carefully observe and chart the child's
level of alertness throughout the day and plan for the introduction of assistive technology when the
child is at his/her most alert level.
♦ Increased Time on Task-The next questions is: How long is the child able to interact with various
sensory stimuli (e.g. seconds, minutes, hours)? To increase the amount of time a child is able to
attend to and participate in a learning task, utilize preferred sensory stimuli that you have identified
to frame the activity. Assess which stimuli would assist the child in attending to the current
environment and use the preferred stimuli to increase engaged time within that activity. (An IEP goal
might be to decrease the number of times the preferred sensory stimulate has to be given to maintain
the child’s active response within the non preferred activity.) An example is the child who responds
very positively to the scent of lemon. When lemon essence is presented, the child looks around, lifts
her head, and becomes generally more alert. This aroused state can then be used to introduce the
child to using a switch to turn on a fan or some music.
Assessing Students’ Needs for Assistive Technology (2004) 157