The UATT team was formerly known as UAAACT which stood for Utah Augmentative, Alternative, Assistive Communication Team. A couple of years ago, thankfully, the name was shortened across the state to UATT.

The UATT team has a budget that is funded by federal and local grants through USOE (Utah State Board of Education). Therefore, we follow the state guidelines set up for UATT teams.

For more information regarding our State UATT team, please go to UATT.org

The next couple of slides are filled with information taken directly from the state UATT policies and procedures manual.

The Utah Assistive Technology Teams (UATT) serve as a resource for assessment and
development of communication and technology systems for students with disabilities. These
students may need adaptations to access their communication and educational curriculum. UATT has been established for the purpose of assessing student needs and for providing consultation to
both IEP and 504 teams regarding assistive technology. UATT does not provide direct services or therapy.

Our UATT team does not provide direct therapy. When a student receives an assistive technology assessment from the UATT, the team will provide
the IEP team with the results of the assessment. The decision about which assistive technology
devices and services a student requires and how they are included in the IEP is the responsibility
of the IEP team.

Our Canyons District UATT team is made up of 6 members. Most of us have our own full-time caseloads and UATT is an additional part of our jobs:

Britta Scullion, OT
Joelle Rasmussen, SLP
Nate Marsden, Teacher
Lindsey Meyers, SLP
Eli Munyankindi, SLP
Julie Michaels para-professional

The UATT team is supervised by Maria Hawley who is the Related Services Coordinator (SLPs, OTs, APEs, Audiologist, Teacher for the Deaf and Blind and Vision specialist).

UATT can support students with communication needs to facilitate academic success. We have a number of devices available for check out.

A dedicated communication device is just that-dedicated to communication. These devices differ from iPads, because their sole purpose is communication. Kids can't access internet or other apps on this, so it is more easily viewed and used as a communication support. With the access most kids have to iPads at school and home, it can be a difficult challenge to help them understand the value of an iPad as a communication tool only. You may get students trying to get out of the app to try and go play games and get on the internet. And while we can implement restrictions and guided access, the students mindset of using an iPad for other purposes can create an obstacle for them to use it as communication.

We can come do an evaluation with a student who may benefit from a text-to-speech program.

So, you think you have a student that may benefit from a UATT referral. What do you do?

Our forms are found in the Special Ed Weebly in the Staff Resources tab.

Find the "UATT forms" at the bottom and click it. It will open up a variety of tabs and you can access the referral form in the UATT referral form button.

Fill out the referral and give us as much information as you can about the student and the situation.

Once received, someone from our team will contact you and set up an appointment. We will also need a permission to test before we come out, but we will let you know when we are ready for you to obtain that from the parent.

Once you have the recommendations and report, we assist the IEP in implementing the recommendations. A recommendation can be something like "This student would benefit from access to a portable keyboard for typing longer assignments". Now your school may have equipment that the student already has access to, so that would be the best. If your school doesn't have the equipment a student can access, we can assist you in finding that equipment. The equipment may be available for check-out from the UATT team, it may be available in your school somewhere or we may have to search a little harder for it. I will tell you right now that our team has 2 chromebooks that we can check-out for trials for a student, so if the IEP team decides that a certain student needs access to a chromebook across their day, that would be a discussion to have with a teacher specialist. We may recommend a portable keyboard, but the IEP team will have to determine what that looks like for each student.