Assistive Technology

Pizmo 3 has just been released with a new design which is perfect for iOS 7 ,  and has some helpful new features. After updating, you will notice a new app icon and a redesigned interface, but the changes go deeper than just a new design. The updated app is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touches running iOS 7. Click here to download Prizmo. Similar to previous versions, Prizmo 3 still allows you to take pictures of text and have the text extracted using optical character recognition ( OCR ) in order to have the text read aloud using text-to-speech. In other words, you can take a picture of a document and then Prizmo will read it back to you using text-to-speech. Amazingly, whole process takes less than a minute per page. Prizmo 3 also includes PDF exporting and business card scanning. Prizmo 3 adds a handful of helpful new features including support for dynamic text size, optional faster text-to-speech rate, and one touch multiple page scanning. Dynamic text is a new feat...

NaviDys is a web browser for the iPad . The app allows full customization of a website's font, line spacing, letter spacing, and text size. Currently it is only available on the iPad not the iPhone or iPod Touch. While it feels very much like the built in Safari browser that comes with the iPad, NaviDys has features that make it easier to read the web. For people with low vision the ability to enlarge fonts and increase spacing is beneficial. Also, for dyslexics NaviDys includes the Dyslexie font. But using a third party browser does not come without trade offs. You cannot open links from other apps directly into NaviDys. Unlike Safari NaviDys does not include a reader  mode to remove distractions from web pages. NaviDys costs $2.99 from the App Store. Click read more below to view screenshots of NaviDys.

Quizlet is a website where users can create, share, and study flashcards. Users can make a study set on the internet and then study them on a computer or using the free Quizlet iOS app . The app is compatible with iPhone and iPod touch . Teachers can also make a study sets for their classes. Quizlet also offers pre-made flashcard sets for popular vocabulary books, SAT vocabulary, and more. Flashcards can also include images to aid in studying. Once the study set is open you can view the terms in list mode or in flashcard mode. Watch the video above to learn more. Both modes include speak buttons which speak the terms in a high quality text-to-speech voice. Quizlet is compatible with Apple's VoiceOver.  Click here to download the free app. Click read more below to view screenshots of the app in action.

Learning Ally has started to add text  to a handfull of audiobooks in its collection. Learning Ally is an audio book library for people with print disabilities. The audio books with intergrated text download and opparate just like any other Learning Ally audiobook. If you prefer to just listen to the book and not read along you can do so. The book is read aloud with human narration and each paragraph is highlighted as it is being read. The text and highlighting help users follow the words as the text is being read which can help with comprehension. Some people might find it easier to follow the text if it highlighted word by-word or line- by-line instead of  paragraph-by-paragraph, but including text is a great new feature. The app on the iPhone , iPad , and iPod Touch still does not allow for background download or reading which means that when you close the app the audiobook will stop. Even with these shortcomings it is exciting to see ...

Google's recently update Google Voice Search is very useful and extremely fast. There are also a few tricks that can make the app even more useful. One trick is to ask Google Voice Search "how do you spell..." Google will quickly return the correct spelling of the word and speak the spelling aloud. Unlike Siri , Google Voice Search speaks the spelling back to you so you do not need to look at the screen. This trick is especially useful for people with dyslexia and people who are struggling spellers.

A new feature in iOS 6 called Do Not Disturb is great for people with ADD or people who just do not want to be disturbed by calls, texts, emails or anything else that pops up on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Do Not Disturb blocks all notifications and calls. To enable Do Not Disturb go to settings and then turn on Do Not Disturb. To scheduled Do No Disturb mode to turn on at a certain time, go to notifications and then Do Not Disturb. It is a great feature for teachers and students so they can use there devices as educational tools without being distracted by notifications or calls. When Do Not Disturb Mode is on, a moon appears next to the time. Do Not Disturb allows users to allow calls from certain contacts or allows repeated calls to come through. Watch the above video to learn more or click read more to view screenshots.

Typo-O is a word prediction, spelling and text-to-speech app for the iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch. The app costs $14.99 and requires iOS 6. Click here to view the app in the App Store. Typ-O is simple and easy to use. To get started just start typing, Typ-O then predicts the which word you are trying to type. You can touch the word to accept the predicted word or you can press on a speaker button to have the word spoken  using a text-to-speech voice. The word prediction is very good and can help improve spelling. Hearing the sentence read back to you using text-to-speech can also help improve grammar. Once you have finished writing you can send your text via email or text message. Typ-O includes a number of customizable setting to help improve word prediction accuracy. One negative of the app is that it uses text-to-speech voices from the internet which means if you are not connected to the internet you must use low quality text-to-speech voices. Watc...

HumanWare recently released the HumanWare Communicator app for iOS devices . The app is designed to make communication between a deaf-blind person and a sighted person possible.When the conversation is started an introduction is displayed for the sighted user to read. The deaf-blind person uses a Bluetooth   braille display to type a message to a sighted person, this message appears on the screen of the iPhone , iPad or iPod Touch.  Then the sighted user can respond using the virtual keyboard and the message will appear on the refreshable braille display . The conversation can then go back and forth with the deaf-blind person typing on the braille display and the sighted user typing on the device's virtual keyboard. HumanWare describes the app as follows, " The HumanWare Communicator application is intended to establish a text conversation, through a chat window, between a deaf-blind person and a sighted person. All interaction appears both on the deaf-blind pers...

IBM's supper computer Watson who beat human competitors at Jeopardy! may answer your voice questions in a few years. IBM sees Watson powering a smartphone app that would act like a supper smart Siri . The app would answer your complex spoken questions in seconds. Not only would Watson be able to pull up facts quickly but it would be able to offer data driven advice for complex problems. The prospect of a Watson app is very existing but is still many years off. A Watson app would be like having a voice activated supper computer in your pocket. Watch the above video to see Watson playing Jeopardy! Unfortunately, the technology for such a large scale role out of this system is years away but it is still fun to know whats coming.

Google's enhanced voice search that debuted in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is coming to the iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch in the coming days. Google announced that the Google Search app for iOS will be updated in "the next couple of day" to include the new feature. You simply tap the microphone and ask a question and the result is spoken back to you. The enhanced voice search is similar to Apple's Siri . Stay tuned to learn more about Google voice search and how it compares to Siri . Google says the following about enhanced voice search, "Often the most natural way to ask a question is by asking aloud. So we’ve combined our speech recognition expertise, understanding of language and the Knowledge Graph so that Voice Search can better interpret your questions and sometimes speak the answers back as full sentences. This has been available on Android for a few weeks and people love it." Click here to download the current version of the app. Update: The app has...

Voice Dream Reader is a text-to-speech app for people with reading disabilities or people who just prefer to listen to text. The app costs $4.99 in the App Store. Click here to download the app. Voice Dream Reader can extract text from ePub, PDF , Word, Pages, Keynote and web pages and then read them aloud using text-to-speech with synchronized highlighting . Watch the above video to learn more. Voice Dream Reader comes pre-loaded with the Heather voice, but additional voices can be purchased for $0.99. One downside is that all text formatting and all images are extracted and not visible. While reading a document you can change the speech rate, text size and background color. While reading a document it is easy to skip around in the text and look up words. The app cannot read the definitions so you will need to turn on VoiceOver . It is unfortunate that the app does not read the definition because some people may not be familiar with VoiceOver . Voice Dream Reader can be synced w...

Fleksy is an app for the  iPhone and iPod Touch that allows visually impaired users to type without needing to see the keyboard perfectly. Users press on the screen approximately where they think the correct letter is located on the keyboard. Fleksy is designed only for people with visual impairments. To use the typing feature in the app VoiceOver must be off, and then when you want to share the text you have typed you must turn VoiceOver back on by tripple-clicking the home button. As the above video shows the taps on the keyboard can be fairly far from the correct letter without effecting the accuracy. If there are multiple possible words based on your taps. Fleksy will allow you to choose other likely words by flicking up and down on the screen. After each word you must flick right to tell Fleksy that you are done typing that word. After each word, Fleksy will speak the word aloud using text-to-speech . To add punctuation you can flick to the ri...