assistive technology

The assistive technology role at York started as a student job and accumulated scope faster than the title changed. The department provided adaptive technology assessments and equipment to students with disabilities — screen readers, voice recognition software, adaptive keyboards, magnification tools — and the operational reality was that most of what kept the department functional was the institutional knowledge held by the students who worked there rather than any formal procedure. When the senior student coordinator left, a significant portion of that knowledge left with her, and what remained needed to be rebuilt through a combination of documentation, direct student relationships, and figuring out which problems were actually technical and which were problems of expectation and communication.

The learning that came from that role was mostly about the gap between a service's formal scope and what the people using it actually needed. A student arriving with a disability assessment and a mandate to receive assistive technology didn't always need the technology most urgently — sometimes the more pressing issue was navigating the administrative system, understanding what accommodations applied to which courses, or having someone explain clearly what the department could and couldn't do for them. The assistive technology was the official reason for the interaction. The actual usefulness of the interaction often depended on things that weren't on the mandate.