Disabling Accessing: Barriers to Eye Gaze Technology for Students with Disabilities

This MRP is intended as a resource for parents, educators and support workers to identify systematic, financial, and training barriers for students. The research takes readers through Federal (i.e. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and provincial legislation (i.e. Education Act [1990], Ontario Human Rights Code, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act [2005]), disability support programs (i.e. ADP and SEA), as well as education policy (i.e. TDSB Accessibility Policy P069, TDSB Equity Policy P037, TDSB Special Education Plan [2017]) to highlight the government policy responses to disability in Canada and outlines how access to Eye Gaze technology encounters numerous barriers. The goal is to demonstrate the need for critical discourse focusing on the connection between historical discrimination and biases embedded in Canadian policy,and their role in perpetuating barriers to accessing assistive technology for students with disabilities. The Toronto District School Board is used as the setting, while Tobii Dynavox is the Eye Gaze technology vendor under review for analyzing how policy, programs and institutional practices enable or disable access for prospective students.Theoretical DiscussionAn analysis of the scientific (i.e. Biomedical, Functional) and social models of disability (i.e. Environmental, Human Rights) is used to illustrate how each perspective shapes understandings of disability differently, then moves to examining the dominant disability perspective guiding legislation, policy and programs affecting persons with disabilities in Canada. Both a human rights approach todisability and critical policy frameworks are used to analyze the context within which social and education policies are entrenched and administered in Canadian society, contributing to systematic, financial, procedural, and training barriers to accessingEye Gaze technology. ConclusionThe MRP concludes that scientific and biomedical models of disability have historically shaped government policy responses to disability and continue to do so today. Canadian policy and programs meant to facilitate access to Eye Gaze technology are guided by scientific understandings of disability, which embed systematic, proceduraland training barriers into policy programs that are supposed to provide funding support to overcome financial barriers. A list of 10 classroom recommendations for barrier free access to Eye Gaze technology is presented using the social model approach, to help parents, educators and support workers identify and eliminate obstacles for users. The MRP ends with a call for further discussion and scholarship of Eye Gaze technology in classrooms, which provides readers with 6 recommended areas of Eye Gaze technology research.