The following is an excerpt from an guest blog post featured on the special education technology blog Teaching All Students that follows the orbiTouch experience of a young man and his mother. A big thanks to Patrick Black, blog creator, for featuring us!
Devin Spangler was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome when he was 7 years old. When you sit down with Devin, now 13, it is evident he is an articulate and bright young man. In fact, he speaks more clearly and cogently than many adults. However, according to his mother Allie, self-expression hasn’t always been easy.
Only years earlier, completing school work was a daily battle. Devin became increasingly reluctant to handwrite school assignments because his hands would fatigue quickly. Standard keyboards didn’t go over much better--their QWERTY layout seemingly had no order, something individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder crave. OrbiTouch helped him break through communication barriers. This is Allie and Devin Spangler’s orbiTouch story.
Questions For Devin:
Which features about orbiTouch did you like best? For example, alphabetical order, corresponding colors with characters, comfortable design, etc.?
Well, personally my favorites, or my top three favorites, are alphabetical order, comfortable design, and I love the mouse. The fact that it has a mouse in it. It just makes it less cluttered. You have a desk and an orbiTouch. It makes it easier to have it all there.
Did using orbiTouch make typing more comfortable?
I think using the orbiTouch actually led me into typing more. Now, I'm writing five paragraph essays and the whole nine yards.
Before orbiTouch, when you would sit down at a computer, what kind of feelings did you experience? After using orbiTouch?
Well, before the orbiTouch, I would experience the feeling of discomfort, unhappiness. It was very tedious, like math. After the orbiTouch, it was better. I felt a little more comfortable approaching a keyboard, because I knew how it really worked, the basics of typing. The keyless keyboard led me into typing.
Questions For Allie:
Did you see Devin change the way he viewed computer use after using orbiTouch? What kind of emotions, as a parent, did you experience?
Absolutely, I did. I immediately saw that spark and that love of learning come back. Because we were getting to the point where he was losing that zest for learning because it was becoming so tedious, having to sit there and type on a keyboard. Physically writing is very difficult for him. It still is til this day.
He has low muscle tone in his fingers so when he writes, everything gets tired. And it's painful. It gets up all the way up into his shoulders. So we had to find an alternative. His first grade teacher was fantastic. She was open to allowing him to use different forms of technology in the classroom.
For the entirety of this article, please visit http://teachingall.