College Transition

Ten staff members you should meet before or at the beginning of college

When preparing for an IEP meeting, a 504 Plan meeting, or a Disability Services meeting, parents and students will often be asked to come up with sample accommodations that can be used to provide services for students in the classroom. However, it can be very…

A prospective student recently asked me if they really needed to get a Disability Services file for college, because they didn’t want to go through the intake process or go to a bunch of meetings when they would primarily be taking online classes and could…

Since I was in a tech-related major during undergrad, I became the default IT specialist and device troubleshooter for friends, family members, people who lived in my dorm building, and other students who had trouble using their computer or other mobile devices. Practical information technology…

While I have always been interested in studying assistive technology and “other technology”, I changed my undergraduate major three times. I started as an applied computer science major, switched to information technology, and ultimately graduated with a degree in Computational and Data Sciences. Before changing…

As part of my work as the Microsoft Content Specialist for AIM-VA and as a Microsoft Certified Educator, I had the opportunity to present a short talk as part of the AT Lab at the I’m Determined Summit 2020, a virtual conference for students with…

How to tell college professors about your disability services file

Whenever I speak about my experiences with working with a teacher of the visually impaired (TVI) while attending public school, people are often surprised by how many lessons my TVI taught me in high school, even though I did not see them very often. Even…

Whenever I speak about my experiences with working with a teacher of the visually impaired (TVI) while attending public school, people are often surprised by how many lessons my TVI taught me in high school, even though I did not see them very often. They…

During my senior year of high school, I went from having a few virtual classes each year to a truly hybrid online class schedule, where 50% or more of my classes were online. This continued throughout undergrad in college, before I transitioned to having all…

When I switched to taking 100% online classes, I thought that the transition would be pretty easy because I had already had a hybrid schedule with a mix of in-person and online classes since I was in high school. What I hadn’t considered was that…

As a student with low vision and an unpredictable chronic illness, I spend a lot of time learning asynchronously outside of the classroom. Even when I do attend classes in-person, I often search for study resources online to explore topics in-depth or get explanations about…