AHEAD Academy: Adaptive Technology - Spring 2025

About this Course

REGISTRATION IS CURRENTLY CLOSED.
Please Check Back in Fall 2025!
Adaptive Technology in Higher Education:
From Inventory to Intake to Implementation

Person wearing headphones working on a computer
This course examines adaptive technology (AT) in higher education for students with disabilities, including hardware and software for students with learning, visual, sensory and physical disabilities. The course will acquaint participants with the use of screen readers, captioning, interpreting services, audio description, voice recognition software, eBooks, alternative formats, text-to-speech & speech to text technologies, accommodations for STEM coursework, and emerging resources. Participants will become familiar with a variety of adaptive supports and the pros and cons of each.
 
This course is divided into 8 sections,  with suggested readings, assignments, question prompts for group discussion online, and a brief, reflective quiz at the end of each section.  An open live chat with the instructor and anyone who wishes to join will be available.  A certificate of completion is available from AHEAD once you have finished the course.
Concepts covered include:
 
  • AT Inventories and Accessibility Checklists
  • Introduction to the spectrum of adaptive technologies & student intake evaluations
  • Adaptive Technologies for:
    • Reading Disabilities, Low Vision & Blindness
    • Deaf & Hard of Hearing Students
    • Learning Disabilities and Physical Disabilities Making Math & Sciences Accessible
  • Adaptive Technology v. Universal Design
  • Campus buy-in and implementation
Students should plan 2-3 hours to work on each weekly module. The instructor and AHEAD staff will be available throughout the course to give feedback and support to students as needed.
This is a topic of interest for me, so I was quite engaged. This class opened my eyes to new technologies I was not aware of, what other universities are doing with accessibility standards at their institutions, and tasks that I can easily do to create an inclusive campus and educate faculty and students for support with assistive technology.

- Fall 2024 Student

Course Instructor

Wink Harner

Wink Harner 
Accessibility Consultant/Alternative Text Production

2017 – 2023: Adjunct professor of assistive technology in a graduate program for CUNY specializing in disabilities services in higher education. This is one of the only online Masters program in disability studies in the country. Wink has taught a required course in Assistive Technology in Higher Education in this program for five years. Many of students successfully have obtained jobs in the field.
 
Wink provides adaptive technology consulting, research, mentoring and training; regularly presents at local, state, and national conferences specializing in adaptive technology and accessibility in higher education.
 
2014 – Present: has served on the executive board for ATHEN, and has been invited as a keynote speaker for several statewide & national organizations focusing on accessibility and higher education. From the AZTAP Technology Access Project in Arizona to the Texas AHEAD conference, to chairing the Mayor’s Committee on Accessibility Awareness in both Scottsdale & Mesa Arizona, to spearheading a scholarship fundraising drive partnering with Arizona Special Olympics to raise more than $100,000 for students with disabilities.
 
She has frequently presented at Accessing Higher Ground on Dragon NaturallySpeaking and other specialized speech to text software, math & science accessibility, text to speech in math and other areas of interest in science & math accessibility.
 
She has a background as a manager of disability resources and has worked in the field of accessibility for several decades.
 
Her original academic training is in foreign languages and she was a professor of Spanish, Portuguese, & French in Arizona for 25 years, speaks six languages, including Klingon and is a pretty awesome jazz trombone player. 

Course Access

Registrants May
Access the Course 
beginning at 9 am EST on
Monday, February 17, 2025