XMA; A specialist Assistive Technology provider for Special Education Needs (SEN)
Having gained significant and wide ranging experience in delivering Assistive Technology solutions, XMA is now in a position to offer a full end-to-end service to the education market, from pre-assessment of users, through to delivery and support of bespoke computer packages. As Assistive Technology gains further support to ensure that no child is left behind in an increasingly IT literate school environment, it is crucial that IT solutions provided are tailored to individual user requirements where required.
XMA has the knowledge, expertise and capability to provide these solutions at best value, whilst also understanding the detail of delivering and supporting IT infrastructure solutions within education. XMA’s investment into Assistive Technology provision is clear and will partner with its customers to deliver the best proposition for their needs.
XMA and assistive technology experts, iansyst scooped the ‘Working Together’ award at the Technology for good awards for their collaboration on the government-back Home Access programme last year.
Read the full story here.
Home Access Assistive Technology packages
Partnership to deliver
Providing a scaleable programme that could be delivered ‘en masse’ in the same manner as the rest of the national Home Access programme was a considerable challenge.
Each package required individual assessment, with bespoke requirements that had to be balanced with economies of scale to deliver 12,000 packages within a £24 million budget. The nature of the solution to be delivered did not lend itself to a specialist market in terms of scaleability. In addition, Assistive Technology providers are often focused on a particular type of disability, meaning a large breadth of requirements could not be met acros one particular specialist.
To achieve a viable solution, a combination of scale and speciality was key; this was delivered through a robust partnership between an Assistive Technology specialist with a broad product portfolio and XMA with the capability to deliver.
After initial consultations it was clear that Iansyst Ltd could partner well with XMA. Iansyst Ltd fully understood the project requirements and compliancy, could deliver the capacity for the required delivery and could provide a robust commercial proposition that would deliver value for money and meet functional requirements. In addition, XMA worked with Iansyst on the Home Access pilot programme in 2009 delivering 600 Assisitive Technology packages to low income families.
As our partner, Iansyst delivered a range of leading software, assistive technology; training, help desk support and ergonomic equipment to enable disabled children to have internet connectivity at home. With a head office in Cambridge, Iansyst employs over 100 staff to deliver a nationwide service. An experienced and well qualified team of Assistive Technology trainers based regionally across the UK deliver local and onsite training services. The Iansyst customer base is focused within the education sector including thousands of schools, colleges and universities.
XMA’s partnership with Iansyst was built on these competencies – an understanding of both the products and the customers. A service structure was built between the two companies to support the roll-out, based on a solid foundation of business processes to underpin the integration of the two businesses. Together this led to the successful delivery of the Home Access Assistive Technology programme.
Product packages
For Home Access,XMA and Iansyst developed a package that met the requirements of the standard Home Access package (the ‘base package’), which specific Assistive Technology requirements could then be added to (the ‘bespoke package’). Recipients were pre-assessed by a SEN Assessor with each specification passed to Iansyst to specify, and XMA to build.
- The ‘base’ package included:
• Client device (Laptop or desktop with TFT)
- Microsoft Windows 7 Pro Operating System
• Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
- Net Intelligence filtering software – 3 Year Licence
- Lifetime anti-virus protection with Microsoft Security Essentials
- One year technical support (including cover for any AT equipment)
- One year warranty (including cover for any AT equipment)
- One year insurance (including AT equipment)
- For desktops – mouse and keyboard
- For laptops - mouse, laptop and rucksack
- 12 months connectivity (Fixed Line or Mobile Broadband)
- Delivery to the user’s address
Elements of the ‘bespoke’ package may have included but not been limited to:
- Visual impairment software, braille readers, large screens and Touch screens
- Specialist peripherals for motor disabilities, including switches, specialist mice and keyboards.
- Literacy support tools
• Hearing impairment devices
- Study aids
- Accessibility tools
Each package is fully configured by XMA to include all software pre-installed and any peripherals calibrated to user requirements. Each system is delivered to the user fully enabled with no additional setup required. This is further enhanced by on-site installation and training for users who require additional support. Post delivery, XMA provides a technical support helpdesk to field any software or hardware issues relating to the provision of the package, and a full warranty service is managed in-house to restore any packages to the format they were originally delivered.
