ATU751 – AT3 Center with Marty Exline and Ryan Rausch

Hi, this is Ryan Rausch with the AT3 Center

And Marty Exline with AT3 Center.

And this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 751 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on October 17th, 2025.

On today’s show, we’re super excited to welcome Marty Exline and Ryan Rausch from the AT3 Center on to talk about all the great things they do to help the ATX, as we finish up our three-week series talking about the ATX, ATAP and all the great things that go into these programs. Don’t forget listeners, if you’re looking for a transcript of today’s show, it is available over at EastersealsTech.com. Our transcripts are generously sponsored by InTRAC. InTRAC is the provider of Indiana Relay Services, and you can find out more about InTRAC and all their great programs over at IndianaRelay.com. As always, listeners, we thank you so much for listening. Let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Listeners, for the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring the landscape of the ATX through interviews with the great folks at ATAP and the ATAP board. We’ve learned a lot and we’re super excited to finish out our series today with the wonderful folks from the AT3 Center. Marty Exline and Ryan Rausch are here to tell us all about the AT3 Center. Ryan, Marty, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

Yeah, I am excited to get into talking about AT3, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourselves?

Yeah, yeah. This is Marty. Well, I live in Kansas City and was raised here in KC and have been with the AT3 Center since 2016. And before that I was the director of the Missouri Assisted Technology ACT program and had worked before I became director with policy and funding issues with the program and came from a background, really public policy. I have a master’s in public administration from the University of Kansas and became involved with disability work, worked for a Center for Independent Living, and from there started working with the Missouri AT Program.

Awesome. And Ryan?

Yeah, my journey began at Colorado State University. I am an occupational therapist by trade, but I started in the Assistive Technology Resource Center there working with students, faculty, employees to help them find assistive technology for their needs. I was a graduate teaching assistant, and then from there I did a short stint in schools K through 12 in Laramie, Wyoming, and worked again with a lot of the student populations, but obviously K through 12 younger kiddos. Then flew over to Cheyenne, Wyoming and worked in the VA Medical Center and had a great opportunity there and learned a lot, worked in a variety of settings from home-based primary care to wheelchair clinics and so on. And then rounding it out, I did a short stint with home healthcare and working with oftentimes a lot of older adults, which I really truly enjoy and love. But then finally came full circle and started working for the Wyoming Assistive Technology Resource Center in the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. And so I did eight years there and was the co-manager there.

Nice, nice. And you guys mentioned this a little bit, and over the last few weeks with talking to ATAP and the ATAP board of directors learning about all the different ACTs and the ACT providers, I know that you both came from the kind of different, can you tell us just a little bit about those programs, the little highlights or good memories?

Yeah, so the Wyoming Assistive Technology Resources is the implementing agency, and we were overseen by the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities and the acronyms, if you pull those together, it’s WIND and WATR.

I was so hoping you’d mentioned that I was going to have to bring it up. I was like, that is the greatest.

Genius I think. I don’t know who did that, but yeah, wonderful use of acronyms as if we need more acronyms in our lives. But anyways, the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities is a University Center for Excellence and Developmental Disabilities. It is a UCEDD. I really enjoyed being on campus. I enjoyed the student life, but we were tasked with overseeing the entire state. And Wyoming is a rural frontier state population’s a little over 570,000 people.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, and a large landmass state. So a lot of ground to cover. And really, I think that was one of the challenging aspects of my work was how do we reach all pockets of Wyoming? And one of the greatest programs or highlights of working there was our ECHO and assistive technology. And so ECHO stands for Enhancing Capacity for Healthcare Outcomes. We took this model from the University of New Mexico and we took this, it was a medical model, but we adapted it to the education setting. And really I thought it was a great way to build capacity and get into those schools and school districts that we may. We just didn’t have the human power to reach yet. We harnessed and leveraged that to really get assistive technology knowledge and share best practices and resources. Pretty, yeah, I think revolutionary. And yeah, so that’s my highlight.

Awesome. And Marty, what about the Missouri program?

Yeah, the Missouri program, Missouri has about 6 million people in it. You have metropolitan areas up around Kansas City and St. Louis and Springfield, but a lot of rural areas too. So the Missouri program is located in the Kansas City area, but has about 11 demonstration and outreach sites all around the state in St. Louis and Kansas City, but also in a lot of smaller rural areas. They of course have the programs and activities that most AT programs have as far as letting people try out devices, reuse program, low interest loan program, and device demonstrations.

One of the unique programs in Missouri is they have an assistive technology reimbursement program for schools. And so if a school has a student with an IEP that requires assistive technology, they have a grant program where the school can apply for funds to purchase the assistive technology needed for the program. And that’s a collaborative program with the Missouri Department of Education, which is actually, that’s where the Missouri Assistive Tech Program is housed in the Department of Education, but of course serves education, employment, community living, just like all of the other Assist Technology Act programs.

Awesome. But on to the reason we actually have you on the show today, which is AT3. So I guess just start us off with big picture. What is it?

Well, AT3, people always ask, “What does AT3 stand for? Why do they call it AT3?” And it is actually the Assistive Technology Act Technical Assistance and Training Programs. So that’s where the AT-AT-AT come from. And basically our role is to facilitate training and technical assistance for all of the 56 Assistive Technology Act programs. Of course, there’s an assistive technology program in every state and every U.S. territory. And I think one of the most important things we do is to share practices of states projects that work out, help states share their successes as well as their challenges and help I think certainly problem-solving and our goal is to help them be the best programs they can be in terms of Assistive Technology Act programs. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell.

No, and so let’s dig in just a little bit more. I think you did a great job of summing it up. So let’s start with the trainings that are available out there to help the different providers. Could you maybe tell us about some of the trainings that you’ve been a part of in the last year?

Yeah, one thing we do is we do put on annually Assistive Technology Leadership Symposium for directors and leaders of the AT programs. And basically that’s where the directors get together for several days and have sessions to talk about everything from how they operate their programs, again, issues that they face, issues in assistive technology as far as what are some of the glaring needs and successes. We’ve done some trainings with an organization called AIVRTTAC, which is the American Indian Voc Rehab Training and Technical Assistance Center. And that was an effort to really connect some of the Native American populations and persons working in employment for that population and the Assistive Technology Act programs to help them better able to use the resources of the AT programs in their efforts to work with employment and community living for the native populations.

We also did a training for with the Accessible Transportation Resource Centers about a year ago, maybe a little more, and that focused on assistive technology and transportation. The Accessible Transportation Resource Center is more focused on mass transportation, on accessible mass transportation, but it kind of put together how the AT programs and those kinds of organizations can work together to make sure that transportation is accessible, whether it be through modified vehicles or through wayfinding methods or any other way that people can move about in their community and be successful in getting to where they need to be. And then I think a lot of the other trainings and interaction kind of come through some of the communities of practice, and I think Ryan’s going to talk about that a little bit later. But those are a couple that come to mind.

Marty, you just did a great job of a segue. My next question was going to be a great way that I know my team gets to learn new things and gets to work with the other programs is through the Communities of Practice. So Ryan, can you tell us a little bit about the COPs?

Yeah, so the Communities of Practice, there are six of them that range from reuse to demo loans to state financing as the theme. It is designed specifically for at AT Act staff, directors, contractors, and AT Professional. And it’s open to all levels of experience. So if you’re new, great opportunity to learn, if you’re a vet, great opportunity to share as well as learn. And the whole purpose of these communities of practice is really to provide a dedicated space for knowledge and resource sharing. It’s where people can come together to exchange strategies as well as best practices and network with their peers. And ultimately, we hope to grow this as a collaborative professional community. I’ll go through quick through those six COPs. So we’ve got Reuse, which focuses on assistive technology, device repair, redistribution, recycling, and Exchange. Demo Loan really focuses on the device demonstrations and loan activities.

And then state financing, we are covering the state financing activities to support the acquisition of assistive technology. 3-D printing is probably one of my favorites because there’s just so many new things and everybody’s building and making, and so I really enjoy attending that one because they not only talk about best practices, but they also do the show and tell opportunities and troubleshooting, support and brainstorm. And then we have the Educate Community of Practice where this is a dedicated space for Assistive Technology Act programs and education agencies, both state and local. And it is our hope to strengthen collaboration, again, share best practices and develop strategies to improve access to assistive technology for students. And then last is the ICT information communication technology accessibility, and this COP supports AT program staff, contractors and partners in implementing state level ICT accessibility initiatives. And so yeah, just a great opportunity to come and learn, share and network with your fellow peers. And that’s one of the great things about our community of practices.

Kind of along those same lines, something that’s really helped me as a new director has been the Director’s Affinity Group meetings, just because getting to kind of talk to folks that do the same work and learn from them. So tell our listeners a little bit about the Director’s Affinity Group meetings.

Yeah. Well, as you know, so those meetings are held about once every two months. And one thing about assistive technology programs is they are located in different agencies. So for instance, some assistive technology programs in states are nonprofits. Some are based in state government and some are based in universities, typically through the university affiliated programs. And if you’re in one of those settings, your issues might be a little bit different in a university than if you are in a nonprofit. So those groups kind of break up the three different groups and enable people to go into rooms to discuss whatever’s on their mind, could be talking about something they just achieved, a new project they just started, could be talking about challenges that they’re facing at the time and want to find out, “Okay, are there people in other universities that have had this similar problem and how have you dealt with it?” So it really gives a chance for a smaller group, a group that may have more in common than some of the other AT Act programs to just discuss really whatever they want. And we don’t typically have a set agenda, maybe a few items that people have brought up recently, but it’s basically open to whatever they want to talk about, whatever they want to discuss.

And as I said, for me especially, it’s been just super helpful. Great to have that support and know that you’re not alone out there. There’s tons of other folks out there to be able to help you. Well, AT3 also assists kind of with ongoing contact with the AT Act providers. How’s this helpful for systematic assistance of those providers? And then even further, how does that benefit to the public and those folks that the AT Act serve?

Well, we try to keep in contact not only through the communities of practice, the affinity groups, and we try to keep in one-on-one contact. We just probably in the last couple months have gone through and talked with every one of the 56 states and basically just one-on-one talking to them about, again, what their challenges are, if they have any events coming up that they might want us to promote, just any new collaborations that they have, whether it be with aging agencies or education and any challenges they have.

And maybe if we’re talking to one state that is dealing with trying to expand their reuse program, maybe there’s another state that has just done something similar and we can share on a one-on-one basis, well, you might contact this program or that program. So I think the one-on-one conversations really help. And of course in turn, if they’re able to get some information about how other states have achieved something, then they’re able to pass that on through their service delivery to the people that they want to serve. And again, of course, we’re talking about serving all ages in all settings through helping people get the AT of their needs. So I think those individual meetings have really been beneficial and hopefully helpful to the programs.

I can’t speak for all the programs, but for myself, that’s been super, super helpful too. Well, we’ve got a little bit of time left here. Tell us about the Peer Action learning groups.

Yeah, so the Education Peer Action Learning was a great opportunity for AT Act programs to connect with their state education agencies. And that, as I was saying back before, as well as your local and district education agency. And so the whole goal of that was to form collaborations and even enhance some of those partnerships. And so we did about over a year of content where people would come learn with their education agencies and we’re able to then go off and work on some projects and then come back to the next month would be a coaching session. And this allowed, I believe we formed, what is it, 11, was it Marty? Do you remember the exact number? How many collaborations were formed?

Yeah, about 11 or 12 new collaborations as after that PAL started. Yeah, I was just going to say, and we’re looking at next year a peer action learning group focused on aging and hopefully to bring together units like the state agencies on aging, the area agencies on aging and the assistive technology programs to hopefully, and the ultimate goal is always to get the right assistive technology into the hands of individuals who need it to be successful, to be more independent. So that’s something that will start next year, and we’re looking forward to that also.

Nice. And I can definitely say that we were one of that 11 just because our at AT program and our at department here at Industry Sales Crossroads was able to partner with our Department of education, and that’s where our Atlas program, which I think we’ve mentioned or at least talked to some of the folks here on this show before. Well guys, we are running very short on time, so how can our listeners find out more about AT3 and all the great things that you guys do?

Yeah, so there are three ways here, is one get signed up for AT Digest. And so I’ll keep it simple here is go to our website A-T the number three, center, C-E-N-T-E-R dot net and go to the hit contact and then fill out that form, say, “Hey, this is my email. I’d like to get signed up with the AT Digest.” That’s our newsletter that comes out biweekly. In that we have all the things that are going on with the community of practices. As Marty mentioned, we like to publish other programs, events, and so we have a little section for AT Act programs as well as our community partners. And then also the next thing that I’m going to talk about is our community forum. We have an AT community forum, and this is a space where there’s discussions going on, but also I want to point out is there’s resource sharing here.

You can go and upload resources files and so forth, as well as we put our previously recorded community of practices here. And so you can view if you really like 3-D printing for example, if you want to go back and look at a couple episodes there in our AT community. And again, I’ll keep it simple here, go to AT3Center.net, scroll down or navigate downward, there is Our Community Forum button and you’ll click on Our Community Forum and it’ll take you to there and you can sign up once on that page.

And then lastly, our AT Events calendar. That again has all of our various activities that are going on, like affinity groups, community practices, and so on. So again, keep it simple here at AT3Center.net. That’s where you need to go. And then you can kind of jump off there, click on the events.

Don’t forget that same website if you’re looking for the AT Act program in your state, then you go to that same home page and click on Find An AT Act Program. You can find all the information you need about the AT programs in your state or territories.

Yeah, it is a great resource. So Ryan, thank you for keeping it simple. We go to one place, so it’s a one-stop shop. You can hit everything right there. So definitely go check it out. We’ll put that information down in the show notes. Ryan, Marty, thanks so much for coming, for telling us about AT3. I know we didn’t even probably get to everything, but hopefully folks now at least know how you’re able to help us as AT Act providers with we just delivering the great services and the great things we get to do every day and how you help us along with those to do them even better. So thank you again so much for coming on the show.

Thank you.

Great. Thanks a lot, Josh.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update?

If so, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, send us an email at Tech@EastersealsCrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at RelayIndiana.com. A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.