Introduction
Education is for all. Every student has the right to education by law. Special students with hearing, visual, and speech issues also have special institutes. The education resources are being provided to those institutes. The resources provided to special needs students are of different types. Aids in learning, financial resources, and transportation is provided. Every state has special community resources for special needs students. According to an estimate, the U.S. has 9.4% of students with speech difficulty. Going to college with a disability can be stressful for such students. The thought of not being able to make friends or learn will stress out such students. The ability of students to learn, and understand depends on speech. In an educational institute, such students face many issues.
The most common issues are with the aspect of speaking. These issues faced by the speech impaired students are as follows;
- The financial resources for education.
- The expensive therapy aids, and counselling.
- Expenses of the therapy, and learning tools.
- The human help in learning.
- The requirements of a personalised learning method.
- Difficulty in communicating with the teachers, and peers.
- Difficulty in overcoming the stress of study, and social life.
Here is a list of resources that can help students with speech disorders. The goal of these resources is to increase their access to the resources. This is so that they can have an equal part in learning and skill-building.
The Educational Resources
Speech to text learning tools
The tools for converting speech into the text are for students with speaking issues. These tools are also available on online browsers and apps. The students with speech issues can speak words in breaks, and the software will write down the notes. It is helpful for students who have a certain level of speech issues.
Personal Note Takers
According to the dissertation help firm, the services for other students as volunteers are also available. The students with speech disorders can take the help of those volunteers. These volunteers take notes on behalf of the students. Later, they cooperate and work on the assignments.
Augmentative, And Alternative Communication Technology (AAC)
AAC is a device that functions on a personalised basis. It means that its function is according to the needs of each student. AAC is useful for students with high-grade speech impairment. It helps them in communicating with the classroom. It uses gestures, as well as eye gaze, and body language of the student. The sensors assess body language and issue the vocal codes accordingly.
Speech-Language Clinics
On-campus speech-language therapy is also available. The students can join these programs for help. These programs provide the tools to make it easy for going through the class. It also helps them in learning and conveying their part of the information. Colleges hire expert staff at the clinics. These therapists are professional in providing speech therapies. Special education institutes have all the faculty specialising in speech therapy.
Grammarly
The tools for grammatical correction also help such students. This tool screens out the problem sentences and suggests corrections.
Touch Voice Gold
This is an app customised for speech impaired students. It helps them in saying the real-time words out loud. The app works on AAC machinery. It screens out the words and gestures. The translation of words into voice is done by the software of the machine.
Financial Resources
National Scholarships
Every state has a set of merit-based scholarships within institutes. These scholarships are being funded by the national government. The federal government has criteria for special education students’ seats in public institutes. The students with speech impairment are also helped under these resources. U.S. federal government funds many scholarships on a national level.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation: Graduate Student Scholarship.
This scholarship provides a $5,000 award to special needs students. Students with science and arts-based majors can avail this scholarship.
Microsoft & The Seattle Foundation: Microsoft Disability Scholarship
This program also offers $5,000 for disabled students. The speech therapy students can also avail themselves of speech therapy tools under this scholarship. The students aiming for law can avail this scholarship.
Rise Scholarship
Students with speech, and language issues can avail this scholarship. It provides financial aid of $2,500 for students with autism. This scholarship is usually awarded to students of post-secondary education. The autistic high school students are eligible for applying under this scholarship.
National Assistance of Special Education Teachers
This program helps the students and teachers learn with speech disabilities. The program has various speech therapy tools as well as financial resources.
Accommodations
Many national colleges and universities provide separate and special accommodations for disabled students. The expenses of those living areas are lower too. Many colleges have scholarship criteria for covering some of the expenses. The full, and partially funded scholarships by private NGOs are also available. They help with education and living expenses.
Center on Technology and Disability
This program helps the students with disabilities of speech in learning. The program has various financial funds. These funds help with the students’ families, webinars, library expenses, and education.
Association on Higher Education and Disability
This organisation provides financial aid for disabled students. It includes funding for the visual, hearing, and speech disabilities’ students. This program provides non-financial resources as well. Educational learning tools in the form of audio-visual aids are available. Optimal hearing aids are also available. This organisation also conducts many webinars on awareness of the cause of learning. It’s important because we see students with disabilities have low educational training rates.
Conclusion
Students with speech impairment have low resource availability. They have high expenses of education, learning aids, human help, and separate living. Speech therapy counselling sessions are also expensive. The national educational institutes have specialised faculty and clinicians on campus. They can help the students with speech impairment through therapy. They also teach learning aids in the form of skills. The financial resources from national, and local institutes are also available. These scholarships cover the tuition fee, accommodations, and living expenses for such students. Some of the scholarships provide visual, audio, and learning aid tools to students as well.
