Assistive Technology and Inclusive EdTech

Personalisation. Engagement. Student outcomes.

These are some of the biggest promises in EdTech.

But there is a question we don't ask often enough:

Engagement for whom?

A product can have thousands of active users and impressive engagement data while still creating barriers for individual learners.

Because learners are not one group.

They process information differently. They focus differently. They communicate differently. They respond to challenge, choice, structure, sound, movement and feedback differently.

And that matters when we talk about both EdTech and assistive technology.

Technology can remove barriers

For learners with disabilities and additional needs, technology can be a powerful equaliser.

Screen readers, text to speech, dictation, captions, adjustable text, audio descriptions, communication tools and accessible digital content can give learners more choice over how they access education.

UNICEF estimates that there are nearly 240 million children with disabilities worldwide. Children with disabilities are more likely to have never attended school and less likely to have foundational literacy and numeracy skills than children without disabilities.

Technology has huge potential to change that.

Accessible digital textbooks, for example, can combine written content with narration, image descriptions, sign language and other ways of accessing the same material.

Done well, technology can give learners more independence and more choice.

But simply putting learning onto a screen does not make it inclusive.

Personalisation is not the same as understanding the learner

EdTech companies often talk about personalised learning.

But too often, personalisation means changing the level of difficulty, recommending the next activity or adapting the pace.

That is useful.

But it is only one part of personalisation.

Real learners are far more complex than a learning pathway.

Take neurodiversity.

A product might say it has been designed with learners with ADHD in mind. But ADHD itself does not look the same for everyone.

There are three recognised presentations of ADHD: predominantly inattentive, predominantly hyperactive and impulsive, and combined. A person's presentation can also change over time.

And even that does not tell us exactly what one learner needs.

One learner may need fewer distractions.

Another may need movement.

Someone may respond well to short tasks and immediate feedback.

Another learner may find constant notifications, rewards or animations overwhelming.

The label does not tell you the whole story.

This is where EdTech can fall into the same trap as many other industries.

We design for a category rather than a person.

Engagement is not one behaviour

The same problem appears when we talk about engagement.

Many EdTech products are built to increase it.

More time on platform.

More activities completed.

More clicks.

More lessons finished.

But engagement is not simply how long someone spends using a product.

CAST's Universal Design for Learning framework recognises that learners vary significantly in what motivates and engages them.

Some learners are motivated by novelty and spontaneity. Others can find those same things stressful and prefer routine and predictability. Some prefer collaboration. Others work better independently. The same learner's needs can change depending on the situation.

So when an EdTech company says its product is engaging, perhaps the next question should be:

Engaging for which learner?

A leaderboard might motivate one student and make another stop participating.

Gamification might make an activity feel more accessible to one learner and create cognitive overload for someone else.

Frequent reminders might help one student stay on task while becoming another source of distraction for someone with different attention needs.

There is no universal engagement button.

That does not mean EdTech companies need to build a completely different product for every learner.

That would be unrealistic.

It means products need enough flexibility and choice to recognise learner variability rather than assuming there is one ideal user.

CAST describes this as designing learning experiences with multiple ways to engage, access information and demonstrate learning.

That is a very different mindset from designing for the average student.

Technology can also create new barriers

This is the uncomfortable part of the conversation.

Technology can remove barriers.

But it can also simply recreate them in digital form.

A learner might have a screen reader, but does the platform work properly with it?

A video might exist, but does it have useful captions?

A product might offer accessibility settings, but are they easy to find?

Can a teacher adjust them quickly during a lesson?

Does the product work on the devices schools actually use?

Does it work with poor connectivity?

Can learners choose how information is presented?

And perhaps most importantly:

Did anyone ask those learners what they needed?

Accessibility cannot be designed from assumptions

Most people working in EdTech are trying to solve genuine problems.

But good intentions are not enough.

A product team can follow accessibility standards and still miss what happens when that product enters a classroom.

Thirty learners.

Different needs.

Limited devices.

Limited time.

Different levels of confidence with technology.

And one teacher trying to support everyone.

That context matters.

And it is difficult to understand it properly unless the people experiencing it are involved in the design process.

This is why co creation matters

One UNICEF project in Kenya brought together teachers, disability organisations, curriculum experts, designers, publishers and technologists to develop accessible digital learning materials.

Those conversations surfaced questions that a product team working alone could easily miss.

For example, which form of sign language should be used? Should separate resources be created for different disabilities, or should the product be designed from the start to work for a wider range of learners?

These are not small design choices.

They decide who gets access to learning.

And that is why co creation needs to happen before the product is almost finished.

Co creation is not a feedback survey

Inviting a group of teachers to test a product two weeks before launch is useful.

But it is not co creation.

Neither is asking learners for feedback once the biggest product decisions have already been made.

Real co creation means bringing learners and educators into the process early enough to influence what gets built.

That might mean:

Involving educators and learners when defining the problem.
Including people with different disabilities and neurodivergent experiences rather than treating one person as representative of an entire group.
Testing products within real education settings, not only controlled product sessions.
Giving people meaningful choices about how they access content and complete tasks.
Creating feedback loops so educators and learners can see what changed because of their input.
Continuing those conversations after launch, because learner needs and classroom environments continue to change.

Educators need a bigger seat at the EdTech table

This is one of the reasons we believe so strongly at RecruitHer that education professionals need to be part of the teams building and growing EdTech companies.

Educators should not only be the people EdTech companies sell to.

Their knowledge belongs inside product conversations, customer teams, implementation, sales, marketing and leadership.

A former teacher knows things that will never appear in a product specification.

They know why a feature that looks simple in a demo might create problems during a lesson.

They know that two learners with the same diagnosis may need very different support.

They know that engagement cannot always be measured through clicks.

And they know the difference between something that sounds good in theory and something that can actually work in a school.

That knowledge has real commercial value too.

Products that understand their users are more likely to solve meaningful problems.

And companies that bring education expertise into their teams are better placed to understand the environment they are selling into.

The future of inclusive EdTech is not about designing for the average learner

Because the average learner does not really exist.

Learner variability is normal.

CAST's Universal Design for Learning framework is built around exactly this idea. Learning environments should anticipate difference rather than treating it as an exception that needs to be fixed later.

The opportunity for EdTech is huge.

Technology can create more choice, more independence and better access to education.

But only if we stop assuming that personalisation means an algorithm choosing the next lesson.

And only if engagement means more than keeping someone on a platform for longer.

If EdTech genuinely wants better learner outcomes, we need to ask better questions.

Who can access this?

Who cannot?

Who finds this engaging?

Who finds it overwhelming?

What choices are we giving learners?

And who was involved when we decided what to build?

Because if we want to build better technology for education, educators and learners cannot just be our end users.

They need to be part of creating it.

FAQs

What is assistive technology in education?

Assistive technology includes tools and features that help learners access, understand or communicate learning more independently, such as screen readers, text to speech, captions, dictation and adjustable text.

What makes an EdTech product genuinely inclusive?

Inclusive EdTech combines accessible design with flexibility, real world testing and input from the educators and learners who will use it. Accessibility should shape the product early rather than being added at the end.

Why is engagement different for every learner?

Learners respond differently to choice, structure, novelty, sound, movement, feedback and social interaction. A feature that motivates one learner can distract or overwhelm another.