Language Arts Keyboard Overlays for Disabled Students

We will research and develop custom overlays for the intelliKeys alternative keyboard in orderto improve language-arts education for students with physical or learning disabilities. These customoverlays will be designed specifically to meet the physical and cognitive access needs of students withdisabilities. They will be created to meet the response requirements for several existing literature-basedand computer-aided language-arts curriculum activities. We will research the effectiveness of theseoverlays. Our Phase I feasibility effort will focus upon developing a set of tools to document the effectsof custom overlays on two measurable phenomena: 1) student performance and, 2) the social andaffective perceptions of the students and teachers involved in the activities. Data will be collected inthird and fourth grade classrooms during computer-aided language-arts activities. Activities will beconducted in small group formats using established cooperative learning strategies where students withdisabilities are included. We will compare student performances when using an IntelliKeys keyboard witha custom overlay designed specifically for the activity versus using more traditional keyboard options.We expect to demonstrate 1) our ability to evaluate the effects of the custom overlays, and 2) thatwell-designed overlays improve student performance and classroom attitudes.