Dr. Joy ZAbala

B.A., M.Ed., ED.D, ATP

Friday Night Keynote with Dr. Joy Zabala & Kirk Behnke:

The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework offers pathways to educational success for ALL students by proactively reducing barriers to educational participation and achievement. The flexibility of UDL enables educators to design ways to provide students with multiple ways to engage in learning activities, multiple representations of content, and multiple ways to interact with and respond to learning activities. For some students, assistive technology (AT) and other individualized supports are needed to ensure that students are fully integrated into the curriculum in all learning environments. Join Kirk and Joy to consider ways that UDL and AT dove-tail to provide, not just access, but progress toward achievement and success for all students!

Joy's Bio:

Joy Smiley Zabala, Ed.D, has been a leader in the use of assistive technology (AT) to improve education and life for people with disabilities for more than three decades. As a technologist, special educator, teacher trainer, and conference speaker, Dr. Zabala has earned international recognition for her work on Assistive and Accessible Technologies, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Accessible Educational Materials (AEM). Dr. Zabala is the developer of the SETT Framework (http://www.joyzabala.com/ <http://www.joyzabala.com/>), a model that is widely-used by families and educators for collaborative decision-making in all phases of assistive technology service design and delivery and more. She is a co-founder of QIAT (Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology) and the facilitator of the QIAT List (http://www.qiat.org).

For the past decade, Dr. Zabala has been as the Director of Technical Assistance for CAST while also serving as the Director of Technical Assistance and, later, Co-Director of the Center on Accessible Educational Materials (AEM Center). She is also a past-president of the Technology and Media Division (TAM) of the Council for Exceptional Children and the Education Program Chair for the international conference of the Assistive Technology Industry Association.