Assistive Technology for people w/disabilities

I wonder how much better students with disabilities in a 2 year college (Associate Degree or Certificate) would fare if they were given better tools early on to enhance their learning. I am in the situation to see that not very many of these students come to us with the knowledge or even the awareness of technology that would make their lives much easier.
The public schools claim to not have the money to offer this technology. Well who does? We grovel for money sometimes as we struggle at the post-secondary level to offer reasonable accommodations.
My point is that the elementary and secondary schools today do not care about how well a student does or what they learn. It seems that they view their job as getting the student through and out of their institution rather than teaching them to work with their disability and not perpetuate it.
I sat through a webinar a couple of days ago that highlighted some software called Read & Write Gold….. http://www.readwritegold.com/index.html it is assistive technology that helps students (or anyone) who have problems with reading and writing. There are many reasons that people may not be able to read, there may be a reading disability or perhaps they just never learned. But the good news is that there is software out there like this that can assist them. I am not saying that one software program over another is better as there are as many pieces of assistive technology out there as there are types of disabilities.
Read & Write Gold helps a person by reading each word on the computer screen. It doesn’t matter if it is on the internet or scanned from a text book. It will also read what you type as you type it. There are many more functions of this software; reading for you is its basis though.
My point is that if students came into college having already used assistive technology then they could be reading at more than the 5-6 grade level that we see now. I often wonder how high schools are able to graduate students who cannot read at more than an elementary level and then encourage them to go to college. Imagine the frustration that these students face as they enter into college level, reading intensive courses.
More later as I look further into assistive technology for people with disabilities.