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Category: Reader-Submitted via Email

Posted on January 15, 2022January 14, 2022

Mysterious Special Ed Accountability Report Published in California

On January 13, 2022, after staying up late to finish my last post/podcast, I woke up to find a message in my inbox from the CAPCAA listserv that included a very comprehensive-looking report published by a group referring to itself as “The Office of Administrative Hearings Special Education Task Force,” with the email address of oahspecialedreport@gmail.com. The members of this task force are not identified in the report. The report identifies its authors as follows:

Authors/Contributors: This accountability report is provided by the Office for Administrative Hearings Special Education Task Force, a coalition of concerned attorneys, advocates and parents. Many of these contributors conducted research, collected and organized the information, and assisted in the writing of this report.

Bias, Noncompliance and Misconduct In Special Education Due Process: An Accountability Report on the California Office of Administrative Hearings Special Education Division, January 2022

Given the degree of retaliation that anybody calling out the California Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) could easily face in the current anti-democratic climate of American politics, these days, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised that the individuals responsible for this report have not named themselves in it. That could be really a good way to find some “good ol’ boys” burning crosses in their yards and planting pipe bombs in their hedges on behalf of some tax-fattened, suit-wearing carpetbaggers.

So, I can’t discount the report for lack of identified authors. That leaves nothing but the content of the report with which to judge its legitimacy, but that’s almost better. It’s like a blind audition on The Voice; it doesn’t matter what you look like if you have a good voice. What you have to say and how you say it matters more than what your name is or what you look like. So, that’s how I’m looking at this report.

In these troubling times, I’m willing to accept verifiable facts from anonymous authors truly fearing for their own safety if they dare to speak the truth. I will not accept unverifiable assertions being openly spewed by people saying whatever will get them attention. So, let’s examine the assertions being made by this report.

This Task Force’s report follows a professional format for organization and presentation of its information, but it’s not a legal brief or scientific paper. Not every assertion is supported by black-and-white evidence, but the assertions not supported by evidence are nonetheless consistent with those assertions that are supported by evidence.

Additionally, because I work extensively in the very areas of concern targeted by this report, all of it rings true with the experiences that I’ve lived as a professional over the period of time discussed in this report. That which is not outright supported by evidence in this report is nonetheless credible to me given the evidence that is presented and what I already know to be true from real-life experience.

While anecdotal accounts were added to the report to bolster the authors’ positions, the identity of those offering these accounts are unknown, so verifying them is impossible. Again, concerns about retaliation and privacy are legitimate, so I don’t want to discount the privacy concerns of the authors, but one of the first rules of proving the veracity of a document is authenticating its content with its authors. That’s just a basic rule of evidence. At some point, for this document to be taken seriously by regulators and/or legislators, its authors will have to reveal themselves.

Putting aside the authorship issues for the moment and delving into the actual content of this report, what this report is basically asserting is that OAH, which is a division of the California Department of General Services (DGS), is organizationally compromised relative to its obligations to try special education cases pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The report supports these arguments with references to a collection of publicly available documents.

These arguments appear sound and supported by credible evidence, in my opinion. Of particular note to me were its references to the November 15, 2021 study conducted by CDE titled, California Special Education Governance and Accountability Study, as well as news that the courts finally resolved the issue of continued distance learning for medically vulnerable children on IEPs. This latter issue affects one of our families and I’ve been waiting to hear about this situation.

The Task Force’s assertions in its report are also consistent with my experiences dealing with OAH since it took over the hearings in 2005. In fact, I first became a paralegal in 2005 and witnessed the very shenanigans reported by the Task Force with the change-over from the Special Education Hearing Office (SEHO) to OAH that same year. It was a dumpster fire inside of a clown car that had crashed into a train wreck, to put it mildly.

OAH underbid SEHO in terms of the costs of conducting special education mediations and hearings by failing to include the costs of administrative support and sending mediators and judges around the State to handle each case in its local community, which allowed OAH to come under SEHO’s bid by several million dollars, as memory serves. The moment it opened its doors for business, it was already millions of dollars over-budget from what it had bid to get the business from SEHO.

The quality of the judges from OAH was atrocious out of the gate. One then-new judge went down in California special education parent/student legal history for the angrily and stupidly stated words, “Ms. [Attorney], what does autism have to do with behavior!?!”

When you have people who have no idea what anybody is talking about deciding the futures of children who have no voice of their own in the process, those of us who are trying to protect these children become almost as powerless as the children we’re trying to protect. We were, and continue to be, faced with people entrusted with responsibilities that are clearly light years beyond their actual skills and knowledge, and the authorities and powers that go with those responsibilities.

What is the point of having the rule of law if the people responsible for enforcing it are personally incentivized to break it or are otherwise too dumb to know how to enforce it? We’re paying these people to implement the regulations, not to invent excuses as to why they don’t have to and bully the rest of us if we dare to question them.

I’ve been saying for the last 30+ years that special education issues are civil rights issues, and if our babies aren’t truly protected, then none of us really are. The national political landscape appears to support my conclusions, not that I’m happy to be right about that. Marginalized groups with specifically identified protected rights are always the first ones targeted by fascists, so special education is really a “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to American democracy. Clearly, we’re not doing that well and this Task Force is seeing a lot of the same things I’m seeing.

Regardless of the authorship issue, which I suspect will be resolved in due time, the evidence cited in this report and the consistency of what it describes with what I live and breathe everyday inclines me to treat it as credible, though if anyone can find an inaccurate assertion in it, please post a comment and let me know. At minimum, another federal investigation is warranted based on this report, but I don’t know that going to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is the right way to go, now.

As the report discloses, there was already an OCR investigation in 2014 of the California Department of Education (CDE) as it pertains to making its hearings accessible to individuals with disabilities. I won’t repeat the anecdotal account of what that was all about, here; you can read it yourself in the report. But, I warn you, it’s upsetting. I wish I could say it was too outlandish to be true, but it sounds just about right for OAH and CDE, based on my own experiences.

Last year, just to give you an example from my own caseload, I filed a compliance complaint with CDE against a local school district for failing to implement all of a student’s IEP during the pandemic-related shutdown. The most critical element of the complaint was the district’s failure to provide in-person 1:1 aide services, as required by the child’s IEP.

Instead, the district put the aide for this non-verbal, inattentive, prompt-dependent child with autism on Zoom, requiring the child’s mother to be the in-person aide helping her child access Zoom, constantly cueing him attend to the online instruction, and prompting him through all of his work tasks to completion. The aide could only sit there, staring at them through the screen, completely useless … at taxpayer expense.

The aide was willing to provide in-person support and the non-public agency (NPA) that employed the aide was ready to send her to the student’s house in a mask for in-person services during distance learning, but the district wouldn’t permit any in-person services during shutdown. This single parent ended up selling her condo and moving, with her children, in with family friends, in no small part because she couldn’t work a paid job while sitting at home serving as the free aide for her child with special needs throughout each school day while the paid aide sat in her own home on Zoom, unable to do her actual job.

This was a blatant violation of State and federal law that the district kept blaming on the county’s health department. I challenge anybody to find a legal authority that gives a county health department the authority to tell a school district that it doesn’t have to abide by the IDEA. After attempting to get the district to do the right thing by way of written correspondence and the IEP process to no avail, I filed a regulatory complaint with CDE.

CDE opened an investigation based on what I alleged through its complaint intake unit, but then the investigator subsequently assigned to the complaint materially altered the nature of the investigation and cited the district for a different violation of the law than what I had originally alleged, and failed to issue a finding regarding the original allegation I’d made about the aide. The investigator’s findings then went to yet another unit within CDE that developed the order for corrective actions, which included compensatory special education instruction for lost service minutes, but it was silent regarding aide support during those compensatory services.

Think about this for a minute. I alleged in my complaint that the district failed to provide aide support during distance learning. The intake unit opened an investigation in response to my complaint based on the allegation of the district’s failure to implement the IEP as written, specifically with regard to 1:1 aide support. The investigator found that the district failed to implement all of the instructional minutes in the IEP, but issued no finding regarding the 1:1 aide support. The corrective actions unit ordered compensatory instruction to make up for lost service minutes, but there was no mention of aide support.

Once corrective actions have been ordered by CDE and its findings are sent out to the parties, the offending education agency has to provide proof of corrective actions to yet another unit of CDE. When I called that unit to get clarification as to whether the compensatory service minutes were supposed to include the 1:1 aide support called for by the IEP, that unit’s response was, “Yes.”

The offending district’s attorneys (definitely of the Rudy Guilliani/Syndey Powell variety), however, said, “No.” They then tried to fight with CDE over whether or not the compensatory service minutes had to include the same 1:1 aide support the student required throughout the school day in every other instructional setting, as per his IEP, likely billing the district by the hour the whole time.

What ensued turned into an internal feud within CDE. The unit at CDE responsible for collecting proof of corrective action from the district insisted that, because the IEP called for 1:1 aide support during any and all instruction, it was understood that 1:1 aide support also had to be provided during the compensatory services ordered. But, not everybody involved with the investigation at CDE agreed.

What I came to suspect was that the investigator and legal department at CDE had deliberately steered my complaint away from its original allegations for presumably fiscal and/or political reasons. It certainly had nothing to do with CDE abiding by its obligations or making the district comply with the law. It had absolutely nothing to do with protecting the educational and civil rights of a little boy with autism who can barely talk and needs an aide to access his education.

Reading through this Task Force’s report, I’m now seeing that experience again through new eyes. The argument the CDE is fiscally motivated to find it does nothing wrong and neither do its districts, regardless of the facts, as asserted by the Task Force, resonates with me as true.

Another compelling argument asserted by this report that also rings true for me is that DGS exists for the purpose of cutting costs, not ensuring the State’s compliance with federal mandates or protecting the rights of citizens. The report further argues that, as an integral part of DGS, OAH also exists for no reason other than to control costs and not to protect the rights of California’s citizens. As such, the Special Education division of OAH is not organized in a manner consistent with the requirements of the IDEA that special education hearings and mediations be conducted by impartial parties whose only function is to protect the educational and civil rights of students with disabilities.

A State employee who is being told their primary function is to save money should not be in charge of making sure the State abides by the IDEA. It’s an outright conflict of interest, which this Task Force asserts in its report. This isn’t just a philosophical assertion; it’s a regulatory requirement. The IDEA requires education agencies to design and implement individualized programs of instruction that confer appropriately ambitious educational benefits upon each student according to his/her/their unique circumstances, regardless of cost.

A State agency that exists to cut costs should not be making programming decisions in situations in which it is unlawful for cost considerations to be used to determine who will get what. That, to me, explains a lot of the hyper-Republicanism (in the present-day fascist sense of the term, not the former “Party of Lincoln” sense of it) going on in California’s special education system.

And, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that, back in 2005, right-wing grifters were responsible for giving the special education due process business back to OAH. One of the sleaziest special ed law firms there ever was, which happened to be the largest special ed law firm representing school districts in California at the time, was Lozano Smith. It was instrumentally involved in getting the due process hearings switched to OAH in 2005. All of this came on the heels of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2004, which resulted in changes to the IDEA. Those changes created an opportunity for anti-student and anti-parent forces to lobby for changes to how California handled its special education matters, from changes to State law, to changing who enforced the laws from SEHO to OAH.

However, in 2005, something else big happened involving Lozano Smith, right after OAH took the special education hearings back over. Lozano Smith will live on in infamy, at least in my mind, for decades to come following two public displays of anti-democratic behavior.

The first was its epic 2005 faceplant in the matter of Moser v. Bret Harte Union High Sch. Dist. (366 F. Supp. 2d 944 (E.D. Cal. 2005)), which made the news. The second public example that stands out in my mind was its 2014 amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court opposing protections for special education students under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the matter of K.M. v. Tustin Unified Sch. Dist., 78 F. Supp. 3d 1289 (C.D. Cal. 2015). This second example didn’t steal headlines, but the actual outcome of the case was huge for students with special needs regarding their disability-related communication needs.

If special education advocacy has been the “canary in the coal mine” of American democracy, Lozano Smith has been one of the Mitch McConnell-esque specters of obstructive fascism that has been trying to snuff the voices of “canaries” like me for decades. I’m convinced that every single unrepentant person who had a hand in the Bret Harte mess and anything else like it will have a special place waiting for them in Trump Tower Hell, when they die; perhaps it will be named the Lozano Smith Suite.

In the present, all of the concerns raised by this Task Force’s report are grounded in the realities I deal with every day. The fact that the authors fear to reveal their identities is also grounded in the harsh reality that the fascists aren’t even trying to hide the fact that they are coming for us, anymore. Anybody who stands up for civil rights, these days, is a target, and I realize that includes me just by saying so.

Here’s the thing, though. Those of us accustomed to dealing with special education issues who understand Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) also know an Extinction Burst when we see one. So long as those of us who see this Extinction Burst for what it is continue to abide by our professional ethics, stand our ground, and stick to the applicable science and rule of law, none of the self-serving histrionics of those with anti-democratic tendencies within our government will overcome our fact-based arguments. We have to keep acting like we live in a democracy or it stops being one.

We may lose battles on occasion, particularly in those States currently permeated by maskless, unvaccinated seditionists spreading COVID as readily as their lies, but the only way we lose the overall initiative is if democracy fully collapses in the United States. All of us “canaries” need to start beating our wings and squawking loudly as the voices of experience when it comes to fighting fascism within America’s government, or it’s curtains for all of us.

It’s not shocking news to any of us that the fascists are targeting local government, including school boards, as a means of seizing control of the country. That’s nothing new! That’s what all of us working in special education advocacy have been up against since the original laws that protect our children were passed in the 1970s. To the rest of the Country, it’s unfortunate that it’s now happening to you, too, but we welcome you to the front lines and look forward to working with you to win this soft civil war currently being fought over basic rights and the rule of law in America.

To our colleagues fighting similar battles on behalf of other marginalized groups, we look to unify with you. When it comes right down to it, those of us who exist in marginalized groups collectively outnumber the few individuals at the center who put us in their margins.

In a democracy, majority rules. The minority of individuals who want to rob the rest of us of our rights cannot oppress a unified majority. Special education rights are human rights, just like ethnic rights, gender rights, sexual orientation rights, relationship rights, etc. If all of us whose rights are being infringed upon join forces instead of competing for the crumbs that fall from the would-be oligarchs’ tables, we can be sitting at the table eating meals full of freedom with everybody else, instead.

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Posted on January 12, 2022January 13, 2022

A Discussion of Instructional Apps with Zafer Elcik of Otsimo

The following is the written transcript of the audio recording of my interview of Zafer Elcik of Otsimo, which you can listen to in the podcast version of this post. This transcription was aided by Otter.

Zafer Elcik – Otismo

SPEAKERS

Anne Zachry, Zafer Elcik

Anne Zachry

Thank you so much for being in this podcast with me today. I really, truly appreciate you making the time, especially since we’re having to accommodate international time zones, and I’m here in the United States and you’re in Turkey. If you don’t mind, could you just go ahead and give us just a brief introduction of yourself and your product?

Zafer Elcik

Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. My name is Zafer. I am co-founder of Otsimo. At Otsimo, we are developing apps for kids with special needs, mostly for autism, Down Syndrome, and mental challenge. What we are trying to do is to provide early intensive education to the mobile devices and the speech therapy, as well. I have a brother with autism. He has been vulnerable for a long time. And I realized that he has special interest in smart devices one day, but I couldn’t find any suites or apps for my brother. The typical apps have a lot of advertisements, as well as, like, they have a lot of sounds, animations, and so on, and my brother actually liked to play with them, but he ended up with a bad situation. I decided to create app companies just helping kids on the spectrum. Well, right now we have kids all across the US, UK, as well as Turkey. We have already met the Minister of Education of Turkey. We reach education and speech therapy all across the world through the mobile device.

Anne Zachry

That is so cool. That’s such a powerful outcome to make happen. That’s such an accomplishment. That’s so cool.

Zafer Elcik

Thank you.

Anne Zachry

Oh, thank you. So well, one of the things that because we’re here in the United States, and we’re constantly advocating for kids with special needs to get the services they’re supposed to be getting and the supports that they need. And, very definitely, the whole issue of alternative communication methods and kids who have language impairments who can’t get their words out, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have words … I mean, I’ve worked for over 30 years with kids with every kind of disability you can imagine, and lots and lots of kids on the autism spectrum with language challenges, but also across all age groups. And, so one of the things I wanted to ask you about – because I did download and install your app and mess around with it, so I could become familiar with it – the graphics and the imagery, and the age ranges that look like on the app max out at like seven and older. And, for my kids on the spectrum who are middle school and high school age or young adult age, they don’t see themselves necessarily in the apps, and the tools that are are out there for children who are younger. And, the accommodations they need evolve over time as they get older, and they may still have the language skills of a very young child, but they are still a teenager on the inside. And, so, my question to you was, “Is there … are there plans to expand the app to have a version that is more grown up and more adult looking and more age appropriate for teens and young adults that will follow them into college?” Because I’m seeing kids who everybody thought they would never go to college. But once they get the help was like “Oh, hey! That’s a possibility for you, now …”

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

… but these tools can’t follow them necessarily. And so my question to you is, “Are you looking to expand it to for to make the tool something that will support older users, especially as your kids get older … your child users?”

Zafer Elcik

Yeah, actually, it’s a great question, because my brother is getting older and older. And, we try to test with my brother as well to what the level will be of the new content in the app. Like, at Otsimo, we approach early and intensive education, because, like, you heard a lot of the time that you know it, like, if the kids can get early and intensive education, it affects our …

Anne Zachry

Right, right. Those are my kids who are now growing up and going to college, who, when we first started when they were four and five years old, that wasn’t even a thought. But, now that they’re 18, it’s like, “Oh my gosh! Look what you can do!”, because we got all those services when they were little.

Zafer Elcik

That’s because, like, I realized that, in the US, as well as in Turkey – I mean – a lot of countries in the world, because, like, we have a lot of users all across the world, and we realized that, like, getting a diagnosis and, then after that, getting the first education is a really big hassle. Like, in the US, as well, like, you need to go to IEP meetings …

Anne Zachry

Yep.

Zafer Elcik

… to get what you need, and it’s a big hassle and you lose a lot of precious months, sometimes a year, to just getting the education. That’s because we, at first, we focused on the, like, really early and intensive skills, like, small hand gestures, or social skills, and so on. But, after that, we really found out that we need to create content for a really diverse community. That’s because, like, right now we have more than 100 games, some of them is really easy, some of them is kind of middle school-ish. But we haven’t, like, created, like … I can set it up, like, we … our apps are at pre-K to K-2, but after K-2, right now, we don’t have real content. That’s because, right now, we are developing new content every month, just to keep updated. I don’t think so we will create content for university or high school and so on, but I believe it’s so go we can go to like pre-K to K-8, and so on, in the near future. We will have a lot of content for that.

Anne Zachry

Right. Well, definitely the early intervention is a huge part of it. I mean, that’s certainly important. And, you know, my background is also in educational psychology. That’s what my master’s degree is in. And I can tell you from an instructional design standpoint … but, also I’ve worked in IT. I’ve worked it … I can do some coding, it’s not my greatest skill, but it’s not like I don’t have any coding skills at all. I understand what it takes to build something from scratch in code. And you want to start with the simpler skills and move into the … progress into the more complex skills, anyway. You know, that those simpler younger skills are foundational, not only for human beings, but also for technology. So, you build on that not only with the kid, but with the tech over time, I would imagine. So, that totally makes sense.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah. Right now, we are developing these apps for more than five years, and still, I believe that we are in the, like, really beginning.

Anne Zachry

Right.

Zafer Elcik

We have more than 20 people. Like, we have psychologist on team. We have educators, developers, designers, testers. A lot of people lately, designers working with us, and so on. And it takes a lot of …

Anne Zachry

I can only imagine. I mean, I’m just trying to envision what all the logistics are of making something happen, you know, like what you’re doing. And, it’s just … you know, what you’re doing is moving the earth. That’s huge. And you said something a moment ago that …

Zafer Elcik

Thank you.

Anne Zachry

Thank you … that really caught my ear, and that was, you know, the diversity within the autism community. And, we have a saying over here that, “When you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.”

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

Because, no two people with autism are alike, you know. Just like everybody else, that no two brains are alike, even if they have a common disorder. And so, how it manifests … and I’ve got, you know … and this goes to my next question is, you know … I’ve got situations out here where we have students with IEPs that will say in the IEP that they’re supposed to have an AAC device, with hardware and software loaded on it, but they won’t specify what they’re using. They won’t name the device and they won’t name the software in the IEP, as though all AAC tech is interchangeable. And, it’s not! Each technology is different and nuanced, and every student has to learn that piece of technology as a way to learn language. Like, if you start a kid out on ProLoQuo2Go, and then you move that kid to another school, and they see that, “Oh, well. You’ve got an an AAC device with some kind of software in your IEP. We have to implement your IEP that you came in with, but we don’t know what you were using.” And they’ll go off and get, you know, a Samsung smart pad with some kind of who-knows-what software installed on it. And it’s not the iPad with the ProLoQuo2Go the kid knew how to use from the last school. And so, what happens is their language gets taken away. And so, I guess my question to you then becomes, “If there’s other technologies that are going to be used as these children get older, like ProLoQuo2Go, going into the adult world, do you think that it’s wise to start them off on something different and then switch them, or does it make more sense to get them accustomed to one piece of technology and have it carry them through, or does it make sense to teach them more than one type of AAC tech so that if one goes out of business, the other one’s still around?” I mean, that’s my concern. It’s about the people in the public schools who tend to think that AAC technology, if they’re not specifically trained in it, they think it’s plug-and-play, and you can pull one out and push another one in. And, I wonder what your feedback on that what would be.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah, my feedback on that, like, is, we have also AAC solution in our special education app.

Anne Zachry

Right.

Zafer Elcik

We are targeting mostly young children instead of, like, ProLoQuo2Go or other AAC devices as well. And I believe in … so, like, we need to introduce the AAC to the people and individuals on the spectrum as soon as possible, because, like, we have a lot of research also going on there. AAC actually doesn’t have any disadvantages to learning a language. It also have advantages to learning language or concepts of vocabulary, and so on. I believe … so, we need to, we need to show the AAC in really early stages, because it’s helpful for them. And the second thing I need to say: We need to find a way to, like, a different kind of solution. Like, sometimes you need Tobii Dynavox with a eye-tracker device on it …

Anne Zachry

Right.

Zafer Elcik

… and so on, and sometimes you need also some AT with a light reading cue and open source system with you. I think that, like, the schools doesn’t … like, schools must not mandate an AAC over others. They need to accommodate the diversity, the diversity of different assistive technology. That’s because, like, I also came across some schools, like, they’re using just one tech and they don’t want to change, but it doesn’t help anyone. Like, it just helped the teachers, maybe the managers there. It doesn’t help the kids and the family. Because I think that, like, teachers also have a lot of goals, as well, because of the … I don’t want to say that, but, like, teachers need to accommodate the diverse kids …

Anne Zachry

Yeah. Right.

Zafer Elcik

… diverse problems or … the diverse solutions of the kid, and find a way to use the … what the kids like, what the individuals like. Because, like, communication is essential, and when you are changing a device, you’re actually changing the whole communication system. And, you force them maybe to voiceless.

Anne Zachry

Right.

Zafer Elcik

And that’s a huge drawback for diverse communities. That’s because, I believe it. So they don’t need to see a lot of different AAC, but they need to stick with what they feel comfortable.

Anne Zachry

Right. It’s doesn’t do any good to teach a kid how to speak using the tool and then take the tool away from them. And…

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

… and that’s our concern. And that, again, goes back to how special education is legally regulated here, because you can’t just go and change things up once it’s written into the IEP. That’s a legally binding contract that the parents can hold the school to that says, “Hey, these are the things you’re supposed to do for my kid.” But if the contract itself is flawed, if the what it describes in writing is not appropriate, then that’s what’s enforceable. And, what we run into is … Yes, I agree with you that you have way too many school districts that will standardize on a particular technology, because they get bulk discounts. If they buy in bulk from the vendor, they get it less per unit.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

And so, it’s cheaper to get multiple licenses of a particular AAC and a particular device because they can buy those in bulk, because all of these vendors have realized that they can sell more in quantity to the schools if they can convince them that their technology will solve all these problems. And, for a lot of kids it will, but you have to specify what it is in the IEP. Because, if a kid has started out, say, on your technology and it’s part of what’s being done in the classroom, if it’s not written into the IEP, and that child moves to another area, and that IEP has to follow them to the new school, but it doesn’t say in there … that they were using your technology, the new schools not going to know to put that in. And so, what we run into is sort of a mixture of too vague of a description of the accommodation, as well as what you were talking about, what is sometimes is over-specified to the point where there’s no flexibility to try anything new.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah … Yeah.

Anne Zachry

So, you don’t … you have to strike a balance where there’s enough flexibility with the way the document is constructed that trying out new technologies is not prohibited, but what the child is familiar with is also not taken away. And so, it comes down to the wording of the document. And I think that that’s something that a lot of solution developers find frustrating when they enter into the American special education system because they’re thinking, “Oh, America loves special ed! They actually have laws and they make it free and they do all this stuff!” But, when you actually try to participate in it, it looks a lot different to live through it than it looks like on paper. Yes, there’s an embracing of it. But there’s also all of these rules that get in the way of actually doing something about it, sometimes. And so, sometimes the rules are there to help, and sometimes they get in the way. And I think that, especially as an international developer, for you coming in to try and insert your product into that kind of situation and have been successful, that’s enormous. Because that’s not an easy thing for anybody to do. And for you to come from outside of the country, and insert yourself into such a heavily regulated situation, with a solution that people are actually adapting and accepting and using, I think that’s huge. So that’s … congratulations on that. That’s enormous.

Zafer Elcik

Actually, like, the system in the U.S. is changing by state-by-state. And that’s because like, maybe it’s district-by-district.

Anne Zachry

Yeah.

Zafer Elcik

You are right. They’re involved in that kind of stuff. We here are actually trying to be a company like family-friendly, or special individual-friendly. What we try to provide is an additional value. Like, they can pick what they want. Mostly … most of the other companies, like there are big corporations in the U.S., like, they are selling bulk, but they don’t update the software for a long time or doing anything like that, specifically.

Anne Zachry

That’s true. Right.

Zafer Elcik

That’s because, like … and also, some states and district doesn’t … they need to cover by IEP by law, but they have a lot of that system. That’s because kids couldn’t reach out for, like, the AAC they need.

Anne Zachry

Right.

Zafer Elcik

That’s because we try to find a way to be an affordable and accessible solution for all families, instead of, like, binding the districts or states to just forcing them into one single product. But, you are also right. On the other side, if the kids started some sort of specific AAC, I think, I believe it, so they need to follow the same system in the other schools or other districts because, like, they learn how to communicate through that. Like, it’s something like you learn in English in one nursery; while you carry on your school, you need to … you’re forced to talk in French and …

Anne Zachry

Right.

Zafer Elcik

… it’s impossible for you to actually … it’s something like that.

Anne Zachry

I agree.

Zafer Elcik

… take a special tech from their hand just because of the bulk discount or so, but it doesn’t help anyone.

Anne Zachry

Right.

Zafer Elcik

It’s helping the … maybe the district managers and so on.

Anne Zachry

Exactly. And that’s a lot of what we run into is … we run into administrators who spend zero time in the classroom, who are business office people making decisions that affect the classroom based on finances, which is illegal, but it happens all the time, because they don’t know any better. They don’t realize their decisions are going to have that big of an impact on a kid. They’re not even thinking about that because their business office people. And so, that’s I think it’s … we’re running into an issue over here with respect to how the bureaucracy is organized. It was created during the Industrial Revolution and emulates a factory. And, even though modern business technology has evolved well beyond that, public education technology has not. Public agency technology has not. The public sector, our government agencies, are decades behind technologically speaking, which I’m sure you’ve encountered with all of their different business systems …

Zafer Elcik

Yeah, yeah.

Anne Zachry

… and things and accounting systems and was like, none of them are running the same operating system. None of them are running the same software. So, it’s a highly disparate situation. And it kind of reminds me when I was working in IT years ago, around the, like, the late 1990s, early 2000s. I went through that whole Y2K thing … and … when I was working in IT. And, at the time, the customers that I had for the company I worked with were mostly in the freight forwarding business. And, it was when U.S. Customs was switching to paperless. And, my goodness! The pandemonium and chaos that broke out amongst all of the people who handle paperwork for shipping goods back and forth overseas. I mean, this was all a paper driven processing, and now Customs wanted to go paperless, and it was something. And, nobody had the same operating system. Nobody had the same software. But, everybody’s stuff was somehow supposed to magically talk to U.S. Customs electronically. And, making that all come together over the span of like five to seven years was outrageous. But at the same time, I see that now happening in public education where we’re finally starting to reach that place where we’re just going to have to deal with it in do the upgrades. And, I think that once the upgrades get done, and we get to a more cohesive modern system, that it’ll be a lot easier because … we have better technology being implemented in the classrooms than we having implemented in the business offices. And, I think that that’s a lot of the problem is that we have this antiquated bureaucracy responsible for teaching modern children. And so, we have all these innovators like you bringing technology in, but what’s it supposed to integrate with? It’s like a green cursor on a black screen or an amber cursor on a black screen. I mean, some of the tech is so old. And so, I know that you’re having to go in and blaze a trail in a place where, you know, in a space in an industry where technology is not as easily as embraced as it is in other places. So that’s another thing that you have to be proud of yourself for, because it’s another accomplishment, to be able not only to come into the American market, with all of the regulations involved, but also just all of the backwards technology that you’re going to have to overcome. And so you’ve really taken on something that’s enormous. You know, I have one last question. I have a young man on my caseload that I’ve been with for a very, very, very long time, and he’s severely, severely, severely autistic. But he’s even more severely intellectually disabled. I think the intellectual disability gets in his way more than the autism does. But, when he was much younger, he was very self-injurious. And he would hit his head against very hard surfaces, like floors, and roads, and walls and …

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

… and so he was a head-banger. And, he would hit himself and he would hurt other people. And, it was because he couldn’t get his words out. And, when he would speak, people wouldn’t take him seriously, because he did a lot of scripting. So they didn’t listen to anything he said, even when he was trying to speak for real. And so, it got to the point where the behavior became his method of communication. And it took a long, long time; he had to be institutionalized to break him of that habit, and teach him to use his words again, and to get him to, you know, where he could be more functionally communicative without engaging in these violent behaviors. Unfortunately, in the course of all of this before I, you know … by the time I got involved with him, a whole lot of harm had already been done. And he had managed to, as best as we can tell, detach his own retinas from head-banging. So, now, he’s permanently blind.

Zafer Elcik

Oh, wow!

Anne Zachry

He hit his head so hard that he blinded himself, or at least that’s what the doctors are saying, because he just … all of a sudden, his retinas peeled off the backsides of his eyeballs and he couldn’t see anymore, and, so, you know, and it was after years and years of head-banging against really hard surfaces. And, his school would … they didn’t know what to do with him, so they would just put them in a seclusion room and leave them in there to whack his head on the wall for 45 minutes at a time. And, needless to say, there was a lawsuit. And, you know, we got compensatory services for him. But what we can’t do with him, now, is teach him to use a traditional AAC or any kind of device-based technologies where, you know, all these wonderful things like what you created, because he doesn’t have eyesight anymore. He can’t see the screen.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

And so, you know, we’ve had him evaluated by experts to help figure out what we can do for this guy, you know. And, he’s now my friend. I love him to death. He’s my sweet little lamb. He … I mean, I don’t have any behavior problems with him. But, here he is now, you know, as a young adult finally starting to say, “Okay, well, I think I want to have a life and do something with myself,” and the tools and the resources are so now limited for him because of the eyesight loss, because everything for autism was all about visual schedules and visual cues.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

And, you know … and I can’t do that with him. And so, what we’ve had to do is, I create tactile schedules for him where I take dollhouse miniatures, and I glue them on a great big piece of foam board. And, I make like a visual schedule, but instead of looking at it, he’s got to touch each item, and it moves through a progression so that he can, you know, follow the flow of what it is we’re going to do. And once he learns the routine – once he gets that ritual down – he knows the order of events, I don’t have to use the schedule with him anymore, because he already knows what’s coming. Now he knows the routine. But, to teach him new schedules, I would have to glue together $200 worth of dollhouse miniatures off of Amazon onto a piece of board to give him an idea of what was about to happen. And, what I’m not seeing … and so, I’m kind of putting it out there, hopefully you’ll … this is something you can think about … are tools for individuals with autism who are also blind or are deaf and have these sensory impairments on top of the autism that makes the typical solutions inaccessible to them. And just your your thoughts maybe of what you think might be a good way to go in terms of adapting a device for use with someone. Like, I can see if someone has hearing loss … hearing loss, you could do vibration. You could make the device vibrate …

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

… in the absence of sound. But when for someone with vision loss, I don’t know how you replicate a visual schedule, other than to just audio record yourself, like in the voice recorder, you know, just speaking your way through it. I’ve done that, too. But it doesn’t seem to be as powerful as a tactile schedule. And I’m curious as to, you know, when I talk to developers, what do you think about that? What do you think could be done for someone who’s got multiple disabilitiees and the autism is just one of many?

Zafer Elcik

Yeah, it’s a nice question. Like, we also came across like, people with hearing disorders with autism, and so on. We try to make our product as much as accessible for that. I don’t know, literally, like, because we are not doing visual schedules. I don’t know, in specific people region schedule basis. But for the Apple devices, there is, like, assistive disability techniques. And I know that, for example, ProLoQuo2Go has a system. You can actually use the switches or you can … they will actually scan the screen with them. But, you need to teach them this assistive tech on the Apple devices to the kid. And, I believe it, we are also … there will be our apps right now. I can’t say we are 100% accessible for vision problems, or hearing problems and so on, but you can use that assistive settings in the settings in Apple devices. And, combined with that assistive settings with the apps like us or ProLoQuo2Go, or if you’re using a visual schedule app, you should reaching out to developers and saying them, like, “Could you implement assistive settings to our device on your app, because we are using it for for this, this this?” And, that’s the only chance I can see from my point of view …

Anne Zachry

That stands to reason.

Zafer Elcik

Apple has a great assistive settings for people with vision problems, as well as hearing problems. That’s because, if he or she can use them assistive techniques while using the device, apps also can be a part of it and you can use that settings in the specific apps, and you can just scan the screen instead of picking seeing regionally, and so on. You will see here what you, like, the device actually loudly saying that what they’re clicking, and they can actually talk thanks to that, while just memorizing what they were seeing. That’s doable and a lot of companies are doing but, yeah, it’s a one more additional step of teaching.

Anne Zachry

Is it like an API where you if you’re a developer, you could reach out to Apple and say, “Hey, we want to link in with your accessibility tools. What’s the code?”

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

Okay.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah, it’s kind of an accessibility feature. You use that kind of specific codes in your app. At times, too, the Apple accessibility feature actually can be used in the app as well. The name is … or … you can use voice over, or you can use in the voice over settings. You have, like, Braille alphabet, as well as, like, the others. And also hearing devices can be connected to the Apple devices and you can use for specifically hearing disorders and so on. That’s because like, the settings if the app using that specific API or SDK, for just specific assistive technology settings, you can use it in the app as well. And Facebook, Google, using these APIs a lot. You can test it out there. You can see how they … how it’s working. And if you’re using one, we just schedule it out. You just reach out to developers and say what you want. That I believe in, so they will implement it in near future.

Anne Zachry

That’s a really good point. I know that one of the colleagues that I work with who I’ve actually have involved with this student in the past to teach independent living skills, she herself is blind. And she … her whole house is an Apple smart house at this point, because she’s become so dependent upon the Apple technologies to … as her accommodations …

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

… but it’s interesting you would say that because the first time I introduced the two of them to each other, we met at a restaurant in the community that is entirely staffed by individuals with mental disabilities. And, we were there to meet each other – for him to meet her – and I went inside to go get the menu. And, there was a line! And, I had to wade through a sea of people before I could even get the menu to bring it back out to him and read it to him and ask him what he wanted. And my colleague had already looked up the menu on their website, and had her phone read it out loud to the both of them so that, by the time …

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

… I got back outside with the menu, he already knew what he wanted.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah. Like, Apple devices are expensive, but Apple as a company, really pro assistive technology. That’s because, like, they devices are best in case for using that kind of technology.

Anne Zachry

Right, they’ve got the most experience working with this kind of stuff; they’ve been doing it longer. And well, it just for the for the benefit of our listeners who are hearing this conversation, I mean, here in the United States, if you if you’re on the autism spectrum, especially if you have other disabling conditions, other developmental disabilities, you’re also going to be eligible for services from Department of Developmental Services. And every state has a Department of Developmental Services. Now, again, federal regulations that come down from the top, just like special education law, but then how each state …

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

… implements the federal regs varies from state to state. And so with Developmental Services, some states, the DDS is its own thing, and you just go to the DDS office and that’s who you deal with. It’s the state agency, and they have offices in different communities around the state. But in California, and in other states, it’s a little bit different, where you have what’s called regional centers. And, regional centers are non- … here in California, are non-profit organizations that contract with California’s Department of Developmental Services. And, their function is to provide anything that someone with a developmental disability needs above and beyond what any of the other generic agencies have to do. So, for example, for a child who’s in, you know, K-12 age, the school district is going to have the primary responsibility for meeting their needs in terms of publicly funded programming for people with disabilities. But if there’s anything that doesn’t have to do with school, like afterschool childcare, or social skills in a non-school setting, like a Boy Scout troop, or something like that, there’s services above and beyond what the school is obligated to do, those things fall to regional center. So, if a child gets an iPad with your technology – with Otsimo – loaded on it, for example, at school, that’s only for school. If they need to be able to use it to communicate with people outside of the school day, they need a second separate iPad that they keep at home and take out into the community, and that’s regional center. Because the school’s …

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

… only responsible for what happens at school, or anything to do with homework, you know, anything that’s school related. But, if it’s beyond that, if it’s just life in general, now, you’re talking about regional center. And, for our individuals who have graduated from high school with a diploma or aged out of special ed, and now they’re young adults and they’re going out into the world, regional centers and the Department of Developmental Services are obligated to serve these people their entire lives, not just when they’re children. So, if someone is using an iPad with your technology, or ProLoQuo2Go or anything else, and then they’re no longer a public school student – they’ve grown up, they’ve gone on – but they still need that iPad with that technology on it to communicate with people, then they have to go back to DDS, or regional center, depending on how its configured in their state and say, “Okay, well, this is a life functional skill thing for me. This is an activity of daily living. If I don’t have this device, I don’t have a means of communicating with people.” And so, the laws very definitely protect their communication rights. And so, it falls on a different agency to purchase that equipment. It doesn’t automatically fall on the shoulders of the families to come up with all this money to buy all of this tech. There’s public dollars out there for it. Just, people need to know which agency to go to for which circumstance. If you’re talking about someone who is an adult who’s looking to get a job and needs to have this technology to communicate in order to be employed, well, now you’re talking about the Department of Rehabilitation, which is also federally funded and also regulated under the same bodies of law as special education law on a federal level. But again, every state does it different. Some states will roll their Department of Developmental Services and their Department of Rehab together as one solid agency that takes care of both of those responsibilities. Where others, like in California, DDS it’s its own thing and it’s got its regional centers, and the Department of Rehabilitation is a completely separate entity that you have to go to separate from everybody else and go ask for their help. And so, getting all of these different agencies that each may have an individual responsibility to one person can be a lot, but any one of these agencies could end up having to finance the technology, the communication device and software, that these individuals would need. And so, I’m just putting it out there not only for you, but for our listeners, that there’s more than one way to get the job done, and if one avenue is not appropriate for an individual, there may be another avenue that is, and that could still make your technology accessible to people outside of just the schools, even if they can’t afford to buy it personally. And so, I just, you know … Yes, I want my families who can afford it, they can just go straight there and get it. It could even be something they could get reimbursed on by the schools, if they buy it themselves because the schools haven’t given them anything appropriate, and that ends up working for them. And so, there’s a lot of different ways here in the United States where families can access these tools, including your technology, even if it’s not through the public schools.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

There might be another way to do it. So I just wanted to put that out there. Have you worked with any other agencies other than the school districts out here?

Zafer Elcik

Not yet. But we will like to working with agencies and so on. Right now, we are on track to complement …

Anne Zachry

I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to share your information with, here in California, we have First5, which is an early childhood intervention program, separate from the schools, but it works with them, sort of, but it’s separate. And, it is all early intervention. And, very often they’re the ones making the referrals.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah, that would be awesome.

Anne Zachry

Yeah, they’re the ones often finding out, especially when you’re talking about children from low-income, non-English-speaking families, immigrant families … they don’t know what to look for necessarily, or, even if they see something’s up, they don’t know what to do.

Zafer Elcik

Yeah.

Anne Zachry

Very often, First5 will be the one that catches it and makes the referrals and gets these kids into the appropriate supports and services. And so, this is the kind of stuff that they’re going to want to know about. So I’m very definitely going to share it with them. And, then I’ll also have it on our website and everything and I’ll put it out there on our social media.

Zafer Elcik

So, I forgot to mention we have also a Spanish version, as well.

Anne Zachry

Ooooh!

Zafer Elcik

Many families are using our apps in U.S., is reaching out to special education.

Anne Zachry

Oh, that’s huge. That’s enormous to know. I’m excited to see what your project is going to be doing as it expands use through here in the United States, and as it evolves over time. I’m going to be putting links to it on our … on this … the post for this podcast. Wanted to ask me about anything?

Zafer Elcik

No, thank you for your time. Like, it was a nice coffee talk with you. Like, I haven’t imagined that, like, we are going to talk in this prophetic situations, and how I am thinking about it. It was nice questions. It was the one of the best questions I ever ask. Thank you for that and thank you …

Anne Zachry

Oh, of course! Thank you!

Zafer Elcik

… for your time and showcasing our product, as well as me. Happy to see you in two years, three years after this podcast, out with the new products focusing on adults on spectrum. That will be really awesome!



Click here to see Zafer’s TED Talk

See how disability rights advocacy and smart device-based interventions can put evidence-based practices into the hands of the people, regardless of whatever rules and regulations may apply (or not) where they live.

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