There is a new free application called Create and Convert. It can take any editable document and make it accessible. For example, it can take a Word document and convert it to a talking book. For some documents you can enlarge the font, change the background color and even convert to Braille! Put it on a flash drive and it is ready to go. Did I mention it is FREE!!!! Check out this video tutorial below or go to Create and Convert. Scroll down on page to find Create and Convert.
Archive for the ‘assistive technology’ Category
Talking Books
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010Free AT Tool for Studying, Reading and Writing
Monday, September 27th, 2010My Study Bar is an open source applications that can assist students with reading, studying and writing. There are six areas of My Study Bar: reading, writing, studying, vision, voice and help. You can download My Study Bar for free onto your computer or a USB stick. The benefit to the USB stick is that you can provide it to students to use on any computer (home or school). There are organization tools, word prediction, speech to text app, text to audio and more. These are all for free! Check it out at My Study Bar – http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/eduapps/mystudybar.php
Free Online Typing Games
Friday, September 24th, 2010Learning to type can be boring after awhile and monotonous. How about try some games to motivate children to learn how to type? Here are a few suggested websites with free online typing games:
Simple, basic typing skills: Sense-Lang.org Typing games at http://www.sense-lang.org/typing/games/index.php?lang=EN
Easy, Medium and Difficult Typing Games:
Typing Web at http://www.typingweb.com/tutor/games/
A video game approach to learning to type at FreeTypingGames.net at http://www.freetypinggame.net/play.asp
Good animation with this spider typing game (thanks @OTKate from Twitter for finding this one) - http://funschool.kaboose.com/fun-blaster/games/game_super_hyper_spider_typer.htmlWhat is your favorite, free online typing game?
Stretch Break for Kids – FREE!
Friday, May 29th, 2009Stretch Break for Kids: This is a free download to put on computers to remind children to take a break from computer time and stretch. There are a few great things about this program:
1. It’s free!
2. You can program the sequence and frequency of the stretches.
3. There are a few stretches that are great proprioceptive warm-ups for children.
4. It can be done with no adult assistance.
5. Did I mention it is free!
Here is the link to get it: http://www.paratec.com/sbform/kidsform.htm
Empower Children with Disabilities By Creating Works of Art
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009Here is some motivation to get children with disabilities to express themselves through art. The Anne Carlsen Center is sponsoring Accessing the Artist Within. This purpose of this program is to introduce children with disabilities various ways to express themselves through art using assistive technology. The submitted artwork will be displayed on a website. In addition, 10 works of art will be chosen to be exhibited at the Closing the Gap Conference in October 2009. Two important rules are that the children must be ages 5-21 years old and use some assistive technology to create the art. Artwork submitted can be of various types such as paintings, digital art, music compositions (try www.creatingmusic.com), photographs and more.
This seems like a great project for school based therapists to promote. This is an opportunity to practice using assistive technology tools while creating a piece of art. In addition, you will be teaching the child a life long leisure skill.
Go to the website for further details at http://www.annecenter.org/news_events/adaptive-art.html.
Speech Recognition Software Evaluation
Saturday, May 16th, 2009Heard about this from @KarenJan on Twitter. Speech recognition software enables computer users to use voice commands to control the computer such as typing and mouse functions. Some students with dysgraphia, physical or learning disabilities use this type of software. If you are thinking of recommending speech recognition software for a student, you may want to check out this website – www.customtyping.com. They have created a short evaluation form to determine if the student has the ability to use speech recognition. This type of assistive technology requires training and considerable practice (not to mention money for certain programs). This evaluation tool helps to determine the level of assistance and training a student will need to learn how to use voice input.
Assistive Technology Links
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009I am not usually one to support a web page full of links but this is an informative one. Disability Info website has a great page of links for assistive technology articles and publications to access. It is jammed pack with links but it is easy to weed through the information. There are links for AT that are disability specific, links for parent guides, links to the laws and more. There are way too many to list. It is a great spot to check out. Go to DisabilityInfo.gov at http://www.disabilityinfo.gov/digov-public/public/DisplayPage.do?parentFolderId=187
Upper Extremity Splint Compliance and AT Use
Thursday, April 9th, 2009Here is some information on an intriguing study in the Developmental Neurorehabilitation on children with hemiplegia and their use of upper extremity splints and assistive technology. The study reports that 56% of the children were prescribed UE splints but only 48% of those children were using the splints. In comparison, 46% of the children were prescribed assistive technology and 98% of those children were using the assistive technology provided to them. What a difference!
In my experience, compliance with orthotic use is frequently an issue. Some children dislike wearing them for various reasons – discomfort, appearance, parental dislike, etc. I attempted to find more research articles on compliance with upper extremity orthoses and came up empty handed. Does anyone have any articles to recommend regarding orthotic compliance in children?
I have heard educators and parents complain that at times assistive technology does not get used to its fullest potential due to lack of training with different products. It was promising to see that in this study this was not the case – 98% user rate is extremely high.
Reference: Russo, Remo Nunzio, Atkins, Renae, Haan, Eric, Crotty, Maria Upper limb orthoses and assistive technology utilization in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy recruited from a population registerSN – 1751-8423
2009 Developmental Neurorehabilitation 12 (2): 92-99 URL – http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/17518420902783223
Search Engine for Visually Impaired
Saturday, April 4th, 2009Did you know Google has a special search engine for the visually impaired? This was news to me. Anyway, the benefit it that it attempts to find websites that work the best with screen readers. Here is the link http://labs.google.com/accessible/
This has potential to be a nice resource for the visually impaired, as well as auditory learners.
Now once you get to the pages, clean up the pages but reducing visual distractions such as advertising and images. Paul Hami’s blog suggests trying TidyRead or Readability. I have tried both of these and they both work differently on different sites. You will have to play around to see what one works best for the student or for you.
Communication Technology for iPhone
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009Proloquo2Go is a new augmentative communication application for the iPhone or the iTouch. It has picture symbols, text to speech and over 7000 vocabulary words. Currently, it is only $149 (obviously you also need to purchase the iphone or itouch). What a bargain compared to a traditional augmentative communication device. Not only is the price great, it is small, fits in a pocket and cool to carry. Not bad!
