In 1973, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act (P.L. 93-112), which states:
This statute guarantees students with disabilities the right of consideration for entrance and ensures access into our nation's vocational education programs. "Reasonable accommodation" must also be made in entrance procedures and individual classrooms to ensure nondiscrimination.
The primary special needs students encountered in the Cisco Networking Academy Program have learning disabilities, visual or hearing impairments.
Considered invisible and individual, dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia are broad terms that describe significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities. The results of these Learning Disabilities are a significant discrepancy between academic achievement and potential.
Accommodations for students with learning disabilities range from additional time for study and testing to software that will read text for dyslexics and convert speech/voice to text for dysgraphics.
Visual impairments range from failing eyesight to legally blind. Accommodations range from software that enlarges print to text readers that can take a word document and read it to the student.
Hearing impairments range from hard of hearing to legally deaf. Accommodations range from hearing aids to sign language interpreters to software that provides text for audio portions of multimedia presentations.
Funding for these accommodations is provided by the educational organization, government sources or the individual's medical insurance. Web sites for organizations that provide resources for assistive technologies, teacher training and more information on disabilities are provided in the Digital Divide Academy Guide section of this site.