Within most educational institutes there are a substantial number of students with varying physical and mental disabilities. These might range from difficulty in reading to difficulty in attending the institute. Whatever their disability, it places a barrier between them and their education. In the past few years there have been rapid and striking advances in commercial audio/video/computer technology. But it seems that often, these advances are not applied within the assistive technology sector or only on a very limited basis. Part of the reason for this may be lack of awareness and knowledge of the technologies and lack of understanding as to how they may be employed to benefit students with disabilities. This article hopes to touch on just a few of the areas where cheap, off the shelf products can be combined in an assistive technology role. The system and applications discusses do not require a high degree of technical skill to set up or maintain. Described here are the methods of deploying audio/video-streaming technologies that can be used as an integrated and fundamental tool to assist disabled students in their everyday education, from access to reading material to video conferencing with lecturers for students who cannot attend the institute. The article does not aim to give an in depth analysis of the technologies, rather a brief introduction to their use and a feeling for how the may be deployed. Firstly, a description of how texts can be recorded to computer and from there to a streaming audio/video library is given. From this basic system it is easy to expand its capabilities to include video streaming of lectures, both live and recorded.A description of the standard web page interface that can be used by sighted and blind students is provided. How the system can be replicated in a number of educational institutes and how all these system may be linked into a national/international audio/video library for texts and lectures is then discussed. A brief description of two alternate user interfaces suitable for students with limited physical mobility are described. A brief description of how video conferencing can be used to give students, who cannot attend the institute, access to seminars and lecturers is given. An overview of various organisational challenges is presented. Finally, a conclusion is given. (Contains 2 figures.)