Using and Developing Tech Solutions for Students with Disabilities – on the BETT stage in London (link to full lecture in post)

Noa Nitzan, Occupational Therapist || 2, April 2019

In January (pretty cold for a Mediterranean girl like me) I traveled to London and presented at BETT, one of the biggest annual international conferences for technology in education.

I presented on the main stage and the topic of my lecture was: Using and Developing Tech Solutions for Students with Disabilities. It was very important for me to be there and speak about this topic as it’s rarely addressed at conferences like these, and this needs to change. We live in an era where more and more children with disabilities are being mainstreamed or integrated into regular schools, and it is well known that technologies developed for people with disabilities are also helpful for people without disabilities. And what is disability anyway? In every class, even if there are no children defined as “disabled” each student has varied and different needs.

To watch the presentation on YouTube, click on the picture

BETT was impressive both in its size and in the variety and amount of technologies on display. Robots were whizzing around, coding for kids was a popular theme at many booths, 3D printers printing out ideas, and many more interesting things. It was interesting to visit the booths of the big companies, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and see the technologies they were showcasing – from document organization for students, and accessibility features of current devices and software, to virtual reality goggles. Those talking accessibility obviously drew my interest the most, and it’s great to hear the big companies are addressing these issues and that they see the need for and the value in making these changes. Of course, I was also drawn to all the cool toys and it was fun to play with people from different parts of the world 🙂