[Athen] question of accommodating student with RMI

[Dan Comden]

Certainly speech input as Mr. Bailey indicated is a good starting point. 
The technology is vastly improved, esp considered solely from the 
perspective of creating text. The learning curve will be worth it for this 
student.

Purchasing a powerful tablet PC that can support speech rec. along with 
the stylus features, would be much cheaper than hours of pay for a human 
keyboarder and should make keyboarding pretty much passe for someone who 
is motivated to work independently.

So to answer your question, no I don't think it should be a legally 
required accommodation. Existing technology can solve this student's 
issues, even if the university purchases the necessary equipment. And if 
he's also an employee in terms of being a TA or RA it may be required as 
an employment accommodation anyhow.

Of course I'm not a lawyer blah blah blah

-*- Dan

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Howard Kramer wrote:


> Here's an interesting case that came up. A graduate student who recently

> started in a Humanities program on campus states that he cannot use a

> computer keyboard - though he can hand write. Even a short time a computer

> keyboard will exacerbate his RMI (carpal tunnel syndrome). He requested

> someone to type for him (he needs to answer e-mails as part of his graduate