The Effect of Assistive Technology on Educational Costs: Two Case Studies

Until recently children with very profound disabilities–children who cannot speak and can move only their eyes or head–could be made comfortable, but by and large could not be educated. Assistive technologies now enable them to communicate and to be educated alongside their non-disabled peers. This is a wonderful development. But what is the financial cost? In this paper we look in detail at the costs associated with the education of two children who have used assistive technologies developed at our university and compare them with the educational costs had they not started using the assistive technologies. For these two children the costs of the technologies and special teachers hired are offset by savings from the tuition and transportation of sending them to special schools.