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Description:
This intensive alternative access course equips educators, therapists, parents, and support teams with practical strategies for teaching switch access to students with significant disabilities.
Grounded in the principles of presuming potential and play-based skill development, the course explores essential access tools. These include common switches, interfaces, voice output devices, spinners, pouring tools, and PowerLinks.
Participants will learn optimal placement strategies to maximize student accessibility. They will also examine cognitive load theory to identify cognitive demands placed on learners, in order to reduce learning barriers for alternative access users.
Through practical frameworks, participants will discover how to implement high-repetition activities that generate hundreds of daily switch activations. Attendees will learn to write rigorous collaborative IEP goals aligned with AOTA, APTA, and ASHA standards. Finally, they will use cognitive load principles to build sustainable, robust alternative access plans for daily classroom integration.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Demonstrate the setup and function of common switches, interfaces, and assistive tools while exploring switch placement to maximize learner accessibility and motor skill development.
- Create and execute engaging, multi-context activities incorporating repetition with variety to foster automaticity, motor skill acquisition, and high-frequency switch activation across academic, play, social, and leisure routines.
- Apply cognitive load theory to identify the multifaceted processing demands faced by learners managing both a learning task and assistive technology.
- Partner across educational teams to create, monitor, and execute collaborative goals and daily robust access plans.
About the Presenter
Heidi G. Brislin, MS-OTR/L is an Occupational Therapist and Assistive Technology Specialist for the Edmonds School District, Special Education Technology Center, and the Olympic Education Service District 114 in Washington. She owns a private practice, Heidi Brislin OT Consulting in Kingston, WA where she provides professional development sessions, as well as, family and team consultations and training. Heidi has extensive experience in school-based practice and outpatient adult rehab settings. She is a graduate of Boston University and University of Washington. She is passionate about helping teams create authentic learning opportunities for all children, improving literacy skills, switch access, power mobility, and helping children become autonomous communicators.
This presentation is free; however, you must register by November 18th to attend.
Target Audience: Assistive Technology Specialists, Special Educators, Speech-Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Reading Specialists, Teachers for the Visually Impaired, Special Education Paraprofessionals, Administrators, and Parents.
Do you have accommodation requests?
We are committed to accommodating the needs of participants with disabilities. Accommodations will be provided upon request, but must be submitted in writing during the registration process. If you need further assistance, please contact swaaac@ucdenver.edu.
A Certificate of Attendance will be provided upon completion of the webinar feedback survey, and a recording of the webinar will be sent to all registrants. To see our full schedule of webinars and events, please visit the SWAAAC Events Webpage.
Please note that this professional development opportunity has been funded by the Colorado Department of Education, therefore professionals working in Colorado public schools will take priority if registration exceeds Zoom capacity.