Question: Dr. Barkley,
  
  I was wondering if you know of any research or work being done that aims to make education and technology more accessible to people with various disorders and disabilities? Not just affordable accessibility, but insight into how to create and teach in ways that will allow more people to use and understand the material.
  
  I got diagnosed earlier this year and the only reason I was able to persist was because of lectures from professionals such as yourself. I was terrified of finding out that there was nothing wrong with me and everything was my fault for not trying harder. I've made more progress in 2021 than I had in the last decade. Wanted to let you know your work continues to reach the people who need it.
Answer: Thank you so much for those kind words.  I am not aware of anyone working in that field at the moment.  All the focus on high tech seems to be either on developing apps and related hardware (if needed) to either assess ADHD or to create brain training games (often called digital medicine) to try to rehabilitate or overcome some of the EF deficits such as in working memory.  To date, despite more than 300 such apps, etc., few have been studied and none have been found to generalize from the game or similar game like tasks to real world situations requiring that EF capacity.  We call the latter far transfer and the technology usually fails at that requirement.  So I advise against people using websites like Lumosity or games like Endeavor, CogMed, etc. unless you just want to have fun.  But don't expect them to change your everyday functioning.
content: Q: Dr. Barkley,
  
  I was wondering if you know of any research or work being done that aims to make education and technology more accessible to people with various disorders and disabilities? Not just affordable accessibility, but insight into how to create and teach in ways that will allow more people to use and understand the material.
  
  I got diagnosed earlier this year and the only reason I was able to persist was because of lectures from professionals such as yourself. I was terrified of finding out that there was nothing wrong with me and everything was my fault for not trying harder. I've made more progress in 2021 than I had in the last decade. Wanted to let you know your work continues to reach the people who need it.
   Ans: Thank you so much for those kind words.  I am not aware of anyone working in that field at the moment.  All the focus on high tech seems to be either on developing apps and related hardware (if needed) to either assess ADHD or to create brain training games (often called digital medicine) to try to rehabilitate or overcome some of the EF deficits such as in working memory.  To date, despite more than 300 such apps, etc., few have been studied and none have been found to generalize from the game or similar game like tasks to real world situations requiring that EF capacity.  We call the latter far transfer and the technology usually fails at that requirement.  So I advise against people using websites like Lumosity or games like Endeavor, CogMed, etc. unless you just want to have fun.  But don't expect them to change your everyday functioning.