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It is common knowledge that people like to associate with those who behave, look, speak, and act like themselves. Anyone who does not fall in that norm is traditionally perceived, treated, and educated differently (James, 1958; Obiakor, 2008, 2009). Clearly, students with exceptionalities have been discriminated against, ostracized, labeled, and called demeaning names (e.g., stupid, imbecile, and little dummies). Today, it has become increasingly clear that differences are a part of life. Advocates of students with exceptionalities have pressed for ways to positively respond to their needs in quantifiable ways (Obiakor, Harris, & Beachum, in press). In the United States, it is impossible to divorce the education of these students from the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent events that followed. To a great extent, the education of these students has been historically influenced by social developments and court decisions in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) case was a civil rights case that declared separate education as unequal education and unconstitutional (Obiakor, 2009). This was significant because it had the goal of ending racial segregation in schools. Logically, this opened doors of advocacy for students with exceptionalities. The ruling of this case became a catalyst that prompted parents and professionals to lobby for equitable education for their students.

Changes are occuring at a startling fillip in our society and our world. One of the changes is the need to revamp how persons with disabilities are treated and educated. In the United States of America, laws have been pulmulgated to reduce the plight of learners with disabilties. As a result, myriad intervention strategies have been instituted to identify, assess, label, place, and educate these learners. However, some interventions continue to be very traditional. To go beyond tradition and adequately maximize the fullest potential of learners with disabilties, we must value the “specialness” of special education as a powerful intervention program, listen to new voices with new ideas, and debunk deficit thinking that are prejudicial, especially in helping people with disabilities to survive in our competitive society. Interestingly, the chapters in this book have exposed the different intervention options for learners with disabilities. Clearly, without innovative interventions for these learners, special education will be a failure.

People with disabilities have always existed in our communities and societies; however, how we treat them has always been an issue. For example, for a long time, people with physical disabilities received more attention than those with disabilities that we could hardly see (e.g., learning disabilities). Very early research focused on students with sensory impairments and then the focus shifted to students with cognitive impairments. Finally, the focus was on students with learning disabilities and emotional behavioral disorders. Early research with this last group of students focused on comparing students with and without disabilities to document deficits and characteristics of these individuals. Over time, when the characteristics were established, researchers moved their attention to interventions or ways to improve deficits in specific content areas such as reading and mathematics. This chapter is an introduction to the rest of this volume that addresses different viewpoints on interventions for students with different types of disabilities.

The use of technology continues to be an integral component of the current and future general and special educational landscapes. This was only made more evident during the COVID-19 pandemic and move to remote learning that was required by many school systems. The use of educational technology for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students is an important way to address their special needs and improve their educational outcomes. Many of these students benefit from increased learning opportunities that are provided with computer-based technology; however, there are important considerations that must be addressed when using technology with these students. This chapter discusses the use of educational technology for CLD students to address their unique needs through culturally relevant pedagogy and teaching strategies.