Dive Brief:
- Advances in technology have made a range of tech tools, from Microsoft and Adobe software to robotics hardware, more accessible to students with disabilities.
- The advances may be a factor behind a recent National Science Foundation report, which found that students with disabilities are now just as likely to pursue STEM-related fields in higher education as their non-disasbled peers.
- The report also noted that while parity has been achieved at the undergraduate level, students with disabilities are still less likely to continue on to graduate school.
Dive Insight:
Recent advances in technology have steadily expanded the types of assistive technology available to students, going far beyond screen readers and adaptive word processors. Microsoft, in particular has had a long history of making its products accessible to people with disabilities. Now, new tools for robotics, coding, and other STEM fields are helping students with disabilities realize viable careers in hard science fields previously closed to them.
While assistive technology has long been used in K-12 schools to help students with disabilities succeed, continuing those supports into higher education has not always been possible, with one Department of Education report finding that fewer than 20% of students with disabilities received support in higher education, compared with 87% who received it in high school.
High school graduation rates for students with disabilities remain low, but are rising steadily in recent years from about 57% in 2006 to 66% in 2014, according to one recent report, which also raised questions about whether or not students with disabilities were receiving adequate college and career prep.