Assistive technology (AT) is something that I have posted about before, and will probably post about again after this one. But for this one, I really want to focus my attention on the evolution of AT laws for the past 30 years in America. This is/was an assignment for my AT class, so I wanted to go into even more detail here.
So, it all began in 1973 with the passage of the Rehabilitation Act. The act talked about rehabilitating people who had just gotten back from the wars. The two wars at that time were Vietnam and Korea (Korea was a few years before Vietnam, but there were still soldiers who had disabilities from it) and the Rehabilitation Act required that they be rehabilitated so they could be responsible citizens. There was a section in this law called Section 504 which truly set the stage for PL 94-142 (Education of All Handicapped Children Act). Section 504 "required that reasonable access be provided for all individuals with disabilities" (Beard, Carpenter, and Johnston, 2007). This law was applied to both public schools and the society outside of the school building.
Now here is where the plot thickens, in 1975, PL 94-142 was passed. This law went farther than Section 504 by saying that "all students with disabilities had access to a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE)" (Beard, Carpenter, and Johnston, 2007). So, Section 504 said "reasonable access" and PL 94-142 required "All students to have FAPE." The law also required an individual educational plan (IEP) be created. The IEP would have in it how much education the student was to recieve in the General Education classroom. In order to successfully educate these students, teachers were creating their own devices to help students succeed in their classrooms. These devices would later become known as AT.
This law was reauthorized in 1986 and added a new a new age group, infants, toddlers, and their families. They would have an Individualized Family Services Plan (IFSP) which was basically an IEP for the child. This new age group was now allowed and given the devices mentioned earlier which later became AT. Very young students with disabilities could now participate in the general education classroom because of AT.
So, two years after the reauthorization of PL 94-142, in 1988, a new law was created. This law was was the Tech Act (the full name is Technology-Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act). And it provided funding for states to create programs to develop and train people in using AT. It defined AT as two separate parts, AT services and AT devices. Services were "any service that directly assists an individual with a disability in the selection, acquisition or use of an AT device" (Beard, Carpenter, and Johnston, 2007). And devices were "any piece of equipment or product system, whether acquired commercially, off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities" (Beard, Carpenter, and Johnston, 2007).
So, when I look at this, I see that in all reality, AT laws are quite dependent on PL 94-142 (Which we will soon find out becomes Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] in 1990). Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act created the stage for PL 94-142 to come about. PL 94-142 in turn required that all students, disabled or not, have the right to FAPE (free and appropriate education). The IEP required here lets schools know how much education the student will recieve in the general education classroom. In order to help the students who ended up in the general education classrooms, devices were created which would become AT in a law 13 years after the original PL 94-142 was signed into law. So, the Tech Law came about after lawmakers finally realized that AT existed in the classrooms because of PL 94-142 and that AT helped students succeed in general education classrooms.
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