Screens Are Coming Out of Schools Soon, Even as Some Students with Disabilities Rely on Them

“I started getting really good grades,” she says. “It made me feel like … I’m not stupid, I have a lot to say and it just made me think ‘I can do this, I can do school and be successful at it.’

This, her mother, Heather Martin, says, is the kind of promise screens have in store for students like her daughter — concerned students are being forgotten in the nationwide fight against screens in schools. Screens are increasingly being blamed for disrupting student learning: More than 30 states have banned cell phones in school. Some states have moved forward with proposals or policies to completely remove screens such as laptops and tablets from classrooms. At the end of May, the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a surgeon general’s warning about the “dangers of screen use,” citing its effects on children’s health and educational outcomes.

Much of the pivot away from screens in schools comes from parents concerned about screen use disrupting their children’s learning — an argument Heather Martin is hearing in her community of Concord, 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. He discusses some of those concerns, but says, “There’s never been a conversation in the conversation, unless I bring it up with other parents, about children with disabilities.”

Advocates are concerned that those students are also being left out of the national conversation.

Screen time policy proposals are often a “blunt tool”

Students with disabilities make up the fastest growing portion of students in this country – more than 8 million of them. Many rely on assistive technology to get through the school day, including taking notes, reading and writing. For example, blind and visually impaired students can use screen reading or reading enhancement software. Others, like Soraya, use speech-to-text and audiobooks.

States including Alabama, Tennessee and Utah already have laws restricting screens that go into effect in early July.

“My concern is that’s a really quick time frame for this to happen,” said Lindsay Jones, CEO of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), a non-profit educational research organization focused on making learning environments accessible.

Jones points out that some of these laws make exceptions to the limits on screens for students with disabilities — usually a line in the text that mentions assistive technology. But he says that should be the bare minimum and worries many policy proposals are “a very blunt instrument.”

“They left so quickly that we have really left our teachers and our disabled communities this summer to see that,” he said. Perhaps with more time and input from people with disabilities, policies can better protect their rights, Jones adds.

Despite concerns about banning cell phones and screens at the state and school level, disability advocates point out that the shrinking US Department of Education is ill-equipped to enforce human rights. Those rights include access to assistive technology for students with disabilities. The Trump administration also recently delayed a long-awaited rule on digital accessibility in public institutions, including schools.

“For some children, the screen is their access tool”

At Soraya High School in northern California, this past school year was the first time students’ phones were locked in their pockets for the entire school day – as they are in many schools across the country. Heather Martin is concerned that the phone ban could open the door to a wider ban on screens at her daughter’s school.

“A completely screen-free environment feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” he says. “It’s not about ‘screen free’ versus ‘free access.’ And for some children, the screen is something their accessibility tool.”

As she talks about the change in her school, Soraya gets tense. “I hate myself,” he said through the locked bags. He says his phone is not just a distraction, but a safety net to call his parents if he has a panic attack, for example. And he feels picked on when he has to ask to take his phone out of a locked bag to take notes.

Soraya’s individualized education plan (IEP), which is a legal document that outlines the accommodations and modifications she must receive at school, states that she can use her phone to take notes, as well as other assistive technology. But because the cell phone ban is new, his teachers are still adjusting. Because he has classes with different teachers throughout the day, he says it is easy for other teachers not to know his place of residence.

These are the kinds of “unintended consequences” Jones worries about as he looks to a near future where more schools are moving away from the technology he says has changed the game for people with disabilities. If technology is used purposefully, he says, “it can allow us to create flexible spaces, and those are really needed for people with disabilities.”

Jones’ organization, CAST, developed an educational framework called Universal Design for Learning that encourages teachers to design their classrooms to account for the different ways students learn. For example, a teacher might give a math lesson using blocks, diagrams and video to help emphasize the same lesson to different students. Or perhaps class reading is provided as an e-book so that students with visual impairments can enlarge the text, while those with dyslexia can listen.

As screen restrictions shake up in the nation’s schools, Jones hopes people with disabilities won’t be forgotten. “We need teachers, we need people with disabilities, we need assistive technology providers,” to test how such policies are implemented in the classroom, Jones said. “That will be the best way for everyone to achieve their goals without trampling on human rights.”

For Soraya, using these types of tools has led her to embrace learning differences. In fact, he recently finished researching and writing a series of articles examining how people with dyslexia learn. He’s direct for the first time in his life, but more importantly, he says he can express his feelings in a deep, meaningful way.

“I have a lot to say … it made me feel more confident in myself.”