Response: This statement is absurd in the context of physical and sensory disabilities: denying a child a wheelchair because he will never learn to walk; denying a blind child a screenreader because he will never learn to read. However, this line of reasoning is all too common in the area of speech and language disabilities and disabilities that involve cognition. That is, if we give a child an augmentative communication device when will he learn to speak intelligibly on his own? Likewise, if we give a child assistive technology that reads to him, when will he learn to read? We need to understand the difference between technologies that serve a scaffold function that is used for a period of time and then discarded (e.g., crutches after an ankle sprain) vs. technologies that will be life long companions to compensate for a disability (e.g., a screen reader used by a blind student).