“A Special Take 20 with Texthelp Featuring David Rose & Martin McKay, Hosted by Joni Degner” was the title of the CAST UDL Symposium Session I watched tonight. Degner hosted this conversation with Rose and McKay. Joni Degner hosts a series “Take 20” with Texthelp. McKay spoke about his dad having a stroke and losing his speech. This encouraged him to get into accessibility, assistive technology, and software. McKay explained how the software developed and how he has a huge amount of respect for CAST. Rose told his story about teaching students struggling with reading texts. Rose taught in middle school and studied neurology. He went on to become a neuropsychologist and do assessments of students. One day, Rose and others decided: “we need to fix schools… instead of students.” Rose shared they were scheduled to speak at a conference, and his flight was delayed. Rose met with McKay after driving all night to get to Kentucky! McKay was there because the state of Kentucky began using online testing and Texthelp. McKay explained how they worked with Ecollege to use their software and make testing more accessible. They all chatted about a poem: “Thank you, Robert Frost,” and to be generous with our pasts. Rose shared that they help a boy with physical needs to use a book on a computer in an accessible way. Rose also shared how a team worked on the UDL guidelines over several years and included neuroscience. McKay explained how they worked on making math get read out loud in an accessible and age-appropriate way. Rose spoke about an intern whose mother was the dean of the Harvard Law School, and they invited all. the publishers to talk about the language that would work. One thing McKay mentioned being really proud of was getting the Texthelp software on the major testing software platforms used. This took twelve years! Degner was a teacher before working with Texthelp and spoke about learning about UDL and using it as a rubric almost and including: does it work with Texthelp? The last question was, “What is the best that could possibly happen?” McKay talked about wanting to have continuity between the tools being used in academics and at work. The example McKay provided was Bank of America in Charlotte, NC. Rose wants to expand the number of people that UDL reaches. Rose mentioned that there is a project in CAST to create resources for UDL for everyone. Rose spoke about the ongoing project and reviewers from all over the country. It was great to learn about the history!
