How many schools provide assistive or adaptive technology for students with disabilities?
The following statistics were gathered by the National Center on Education Statistics (NCES), Special Education Regulation, in 2001.
- Nation-wide, depending on the student’s specific disability, 55% to 64% of schools that serve students with disabilities reported that they provide assistive or adaptive hardware while 39% to 56% provided adaptive software for these students.
- Special hardware was less likely to be available to students with learning disabilities in schools with the high minority enrollment compared to schools with low minority enrollment, 47% versus 61%, respectively.
- Availability of special software for students with physical disabilities was more prevalent in large schools (60%) than in small schools (40%).
- Only 35% of elementary schools were found to provide special software for children with hearing disabilities, while this was observed in 48% of secondary schools.
- Schools with the highest poverty concentrations were less likely to provide special hardware and software for students with visual disabilities. High poverty schools provided hardware 52% of the time and software 42% of the time, while schools with students from more affluent backgrounds were better able to provide visually impaired students with both hardware (71%) and software (63%).
For more detailed information and tables that depict these data, visit the NCES article, Special Hardware and Software for Students With Disabilities.