Screens save lives sometimes.
Keri Rodrigues knows this. She has five boys. Four need school accommodations. When a sub shows up—unprepared, unfamiliar with the 504 plan—panic sets in.
“The substitute hasn’t read the plan and nobody is there to de-escalate,” she says. Her son uses his phone to FaceTime her. They do a breathing exercise. Together.
Simple. Practical. Human.
Now, politicians want to take those screens away.
A wave of anxiety over mental health and attention spans has fueled a “techlash.” Lawmakers across the country are banning devices in classrooms. They worry about social media, distractions, doom-scrolling.
They aren’t wrong to worry. But they’re moving fast.
Advocates for disability rights are stepping forward. They say the rules might work for the general population. But for neurodiverse kids, these bans look like exclusion.
“Blanket rules that are blind to fundamentally different human experiences do more harm than good.” — Sambhavi Chandrasheker
The Reality of Assistive Tech
This isn’t just about avoiding TikTok. It’s about access.
Sambhavi Chandrashekhar, global accessibility lead for D an online learning platform, puts it bluntly in emails to EdSurage: neurodiverse students need these tools.
Rodrigues breaks it down. Her son uses a meditation app when anxiety spikes. A kid with ADHD uses timers. Reminders. Medical alerts. Someone with epilepsy might need a specific filter on the screen. A child with hearing differences relies on captioning apps instantly.
These aren’t toys.
“They aren’t just distractions,” Rodrigues says. “They’re tools for regulation and safety.”
Who’s at the Table?
Here’s the rub. Nobody asked these families how the rules would affect their kids.
Chandrashekhar argues that the gains made over the last decade in integrating assistive tech are at risk. Not because the tech is bad. Because the politics are messy.
And right now? Politics are volatile.
Critics point to the Trump administration. Mass firings. Funding cuts to civil rights offices. A 90 percent dismissal rate for student civil rights complaints in late 2025, according to a government watchdog report. Families are scared. They sue more because the system feels broken.
Then comes the DOJ delay. They pushed back a deadline for schools to meet accessibility standards. Why? Schools weren’t ready.
Add surveillance bills. Laws that let schools monitor classrooms to curb physical restraints of disabled students. The tension is thick.
Unintentional Seggregation
Legislators know there’s a legal trap here. Most of these bills explicitly exempt students with formal disability plans like an IEP or a 504. Alabama did it. Tennessee did it. Even carved out exceptions for dyslexia screening in TN.
So isn’t that solved?
Andrew Kahn from Understood thinks otherwise.
Local policies fill the cracks left by state laws. A district might ban all tablets in middle school. A teacher, confused and wary of breaking the law, tells a student with an IEP-approved laptop to put it away.
“It happens,” Kahn says. “Even if the state says ‘you can use it,’ the local school says ‘we don’t want distractions.’”
It’s not malicious. Usually. Just ignorant. Or cautious.
But there’s another problem. Even if the screen stays at the desk. What about the optics?
Lindsay Jones, CEO of CAST, worries about shame.
If a classroom ban forces every student without a disability to hide their device. While the student with a disability has to leave class with theirs. Or use it differently. The child stands out.
“Stigma is the enemy,” says Jones. “We want technology built into the system for everyone. When it’s normalized, nobody feels different. When you pull one kid aside, you reinforce their separation.”
That separation hurts.
Kids choose suffering over spotlight. Rodrigues has seen it. They’d rather fail than feel targeted. They’ll stop using the tool. The anxiety returns. The regulation fails.
Ask Before You Ban
The advocates aren’t anti-regulation. They see the screen-time problem.
But they want process. They want parents in the room before the pen hits the paper.
Rodrigues wants lawmakers to look at the child, not just the statistics. Chandrashekhar wants parents with disabled kids at the decision table. Not after the fact.
Because laws written without nuance fail the margins.
And kids don’t fit into margins. They live there.
Doesn’t that sound like something we should fix?
