I have a hard time writing legibly with pen and paper due to tremors and there are people with all sorts of disabilities like dysgraphia. I can only hope these professors can allow for exceptions to the rule.
I would be shocked if they did not, to be honest. It just seems like common courtesy to me to cater to each individual's needs. Even if a professor objects though, there are some very vigorously enforced laws which are intended to help people with physical or mental challenges. School administrations take them very seriously.
(I'm mildly dyslexic myself, so please don't take those terms pejoratively.)
Just speaking from prior bad experiences :) I used to use laptops back even in high school, where the teachers were fine with it but made it clear it was a privilege extended to us that could be revoked should there be any misuse. One teacher caught a kid playing a game in class and wouldn't let anyone in his classes use a laptop. I got pretty mad in the beginning, but the whole thing blew over before I had a chance to go see if I could get an exemption from that rule with a doctor's note.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I know I've definitely been on IRC in class while taking notes (however, some of it was with fellow classmates...) and more, and I really do see how this can be a problem. But computers can be pretty helpful...sigh.
I've tried looking into ways to take notes without distracting other people, and I think my iPhone would be perfect if only I could use it with an external bluetooth keyboard or something.
one thing I remember doing back in HS (and occasionally now in college) where there was no wifi at all was running an ircd on someone's laptop and creating a small ad-hoc wireless network so we could all chat on IRC at the same time. Since some classrooms were physically close, we had some people from other classes join in too.
And lack of network access won't stop anyone from playing offline games on their computer.
