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You Don`t Know Me, But I`m Here to Help - the Trials and Tribulations of Integrating an AT Position into Campus

Proposal No: 206

Bios & Handouts

Speaker(s)

Disability Area:            


Topic Area:                


Length of Session (in hours): 1Format: Lecture Expertise Level: BeginnerType of session: General Conference

Summary of Session

I will discuss the trials and tribulations of integrating an Assistive Technologist position into campus-life including outreach to faculty and staff, coordinating with the IT department (when you don?t work in IT), and promoting accessibility and technology!

Abstract

Aside from having a depth of knowledge on all things AT, this position truly requires a good amount of self-promotion and selling of your ?product?on a college campus. While Assistive Technology professionals see the huge wave of news and court cases related to assistive technology and accessibility, most people on campus don?t know who you are! Having the position of Assistive Technology specialist helps to cope with the growing need of student access to technology, but to be of service to the students, one has to make a presence with faculty and staff. This presentation will discuss experiences of starting a new position and how to create awareness of accessible technology on campus both to students and staff. Then the discussion will lead to several successes (and occasional failure) of working with faculty and departments to make accessible technology more visible and comprehensible on campus.

Kepoints

  1. How to explain the assistive technologist position to the layman
  2. Best practices to coordinate AT with campus departments (eg. Library, Academic Services, IT)
  3. Best practices to work with faculty to create accessible curriculum

Speaker Bio(s)

Van Credle

The speaker has worked in education and in private companies in the field of assistive technology. She started at Boston University as Alternative Formats Lab Manager developing processes for creating DAISY books and other alternative formats. Then she moved to Dolphin Computer Access where she worked with Ron Stewart as both trainer and marketing coordinator, and she was also a founding employee of Digilife Media, LLC, a digital text publisher. She left to pursue humanitarian work in developing countries and is now State-side working with The Catholic University of America.

Handout(s)