iPad Grants and Funding Resources – Accessing Assistive Technology for Your Child
Shandy Marso, Contributor
Raising a child is not cheap. The average family will spend roughly $245,000 per child from birth to age 18. If your child has special needs, this total can quadruple, sometimes reaching into the millions of dollars. With every extra dollar going to therapy and medical bills, there is rarely anything left over for "extras." Some of these "extras" include assistive technology that has been created to help children with special needs. They are devices and programs that can help your child communicate, learn, and discover the world around him or her.
As a parent, your opportunities for “free time” are few and far between. You may not have time to look — or know where to look — for resources that can help your child access assistive technology like iPads or computer apps. Below are a few organizations that offer grants, scholarships, and general access to assistive technology for children with special needs.
Interactive Technology Assisting Autistic Little Kids is a great resource for assistive technology. Not only do they offer a grant for children to receive an iPad, but they also help fund training on assistive technology to parents, teachers and caregivers. You can apply for assistance here. Itaalk also creates an annual list of apps that focus on specific skills, such as fine motor and vocabulary building, that can be useful to children with special needs.
Apraxia Kids is an organization that serves both the United States and Canada. They provide iPads and protective cases to children ages 3-18 who have been diagnosed with Apraxia of Speech. For a more in-depth look at what they do and how they positively impacted a local child click here: iPads for Apraxia Project.
National Autism Association’s Give a Voice Program helps non-verbal or minimally verbal children with Autism, by providing communication devices and software. Their goal to to provide a voice to those whose communication skills, or lack thereof, put them at a greater risk of injury or being harmed.
Conover Mobile Technology Grant encourages independence and freedom throughout recipients’ daily lives by using mobile technology and Conover Company Functional Skills System videos.