Assistive Technology

With the school year fast approaching (or already in full swing) here are my favorite apps and products for accessibility. Hopefully these apps and products will help make the school year successful for those needing assistive technology to support their reading and writing. This list is geared toward students with dyslexia but many of the apps and products can also benefit other students. To learn more about any of these products or apps click on the accompanying link. Kurzweil 3000 Kurzweil 3000 is a versatile reading and writing program for Mac and PC. With Kurzweil students can read scanned and digital documents with high quality text-to-speech and synchronized highlighting. This gives students with reading difficulty the ability to listen to text and improve comprehension. Kurzweil also allows students to annotate documents using text notes, audio notes, highlighting, and circling. Test taking is also a breeze with Kurzweil thanks to its “fill in the blanks” function which allo...

Learning Ally Audio App is now available in beta for Android devices. Learning Ally is a provider of audio books for the blind and dyslexic. The newly released Android app provides access to Learning Ally’s collection of 75,000 audio books for members with Android devices. From information provided on the apps Google Play page the Android version seems to have features  comparable  to its iOS counterpart. The app is available for free on the Google Play store and require a Nexus 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab, or Motorola Droid Razr with Android 4.1 or later. Click here to download the Android version from Google Play. To learn more about the iOS version of Learning Ally Audio click here . To view screenshots of Learning Ally Audio for Android in action click read more below.

Don Johnston’s powerful word prediction software, Co:Writer , has made its way to iOS . The newly released Co:Writer app works with the iPhone , iPad, and iPod Touch . It is important to note that the Co:Writer app has multiple different variations depending on your dialect. For example, there is a separate app for British and United States English. To start using the powerful word prediction built into the app you can simply start typing. A bar appears on top of the keyboard with five suggested words based on what you are typing. On the iPhone and iPod Touch some longer words are cut off in the predication bar because of the smaller screen. Tapping on a word inserts it into the document. As each word is added it is spoken aloud with text-to-speech. The word prediction is helpful for struggling writers and spellers. The word prediction can help a writer who  doesn't  know the spelling of a word by spelling the word if you can type the first few letters. Once you have complete...

Inspiration Maps is an iPad app that allows you to visually organize information. Inspiration Maps makes it easy to create clear mind maps that can help organize information for an essay or walk a student through a multi-step science experiment. The app comes with number of great looking templates for all different subject areas. If none of the templates meet your needs you can create your own. To start you can tap on any box or bubble and add text. You can also change the color and shape of the text boxes. To move an object you can simply drag it around the screen. Pretty much all aspects of your mind map are customization from arrow, to text box shape, to text style. Another handy feature is the ability to add images to your documents. These pictures can really add some life to your documents. In addition to diagram mode there is outline mode which is a text document. The document can include different bullets and numbered lists to help with the writing process. Everything added to ...