[blparent] children and assistive tech

[Jennifer Stewart Jackson]

This may not be the way you meant to go with this subject as your own girls
are so young, but technology becomes even more complicated when we are
trying to keep up with and monitor for appropriateness with adolescents.

I had a disagreement last year with my mother-in-law because I would not let
her get my son a tablet that was not accessible. I could just not make her
grasp that I did not think it was appropriate to give him any more on line
and screen time that I could not supervise. She readily admitted that her
own son was not reliable to monitor these things, but thought the price
difference for accessibility meant I should just let her buy what she
wanted. The kid she wanted to get this for actually loves to go to the
library and I am still not sure what great deprivation she thought him not
having a tablet was causing. I know other parents here think it is important
to monitor the tech our kids access because we have had discussions come up
on this before. Just to clarify, my mil only asked me about buying the
tablet because her son told her the kids are only allowed internet ready
technology that I could monitor. She normally never involves me in her gift
giving if she can help it at all, and treats all of her three sons' wives
the same way. Part of the problem with my mil is that one of her other sons
is one of the anti-Apple folks and he was promoting these tablets for all
the cousins who could read.

I also have had trouble in the past making my in-laws understand that their
fancy Kindles were not accessible if the menus were not accessible. They
kept trying to show me how they could make it read different pieces of text
to me. I use they because two of them had two Kindles out at the same time
trying to make me understand they were accessible. Ironically this was right
around the time the NFB was involved in the suits against those school
systems and some other federal program because Kindles were not accessible.
I also found it a little irritating that I had done hours of research to
figure out the best way to bridge some tech and communication gaps for my
deaf son and me, and then my bil wants to do a five minute Google search and
tell me that all of those programs are available on an android and that he
was sure the apps were better and cheaper. The exact opposite opinion of all
the assistive tech experts I spoke to btw. :)

Jennifer


day, January 13, 2014 11:37 AM
To: parents
Subject: [blparent] children and assistive tech

Good Monday morning to all of you.

This is not a plug for my business, nor anything like that but I was
wondering for those who have blind children if they can speak about their
experiences with the child as it relates to them learning computers, braille
and what ever the case may be?

Lol, I opened up my folder and saw nothing but lock down drills so I thought
I would start a new thread. smile.

 

Kimsan Song Access Technology Trainer

1-877-774-7670

 

www.BlindAccessTraining.com

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/blindaccess

 

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