Assistive Technology Strategies for those with Learning Differences

E.A. Draffan

The Overlapping Nature of Specific Learning Differences/Difficulties

Dyslexia

Dyspraxia

Dyscalculia

Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Dysgraphia

(Thanks to Dr Amanda Kirby, Medical Director of the Dyscovery Centre, Cardiff)

Asperger’s Syndrome

Explore Options

Functional Response

Personal Changes

Evaluations and

Feedback

Personal Perceptions

Functional Demands

Environment and Context

Home Education Community

External Support

Personal Resources

Making Choices

Adapted from theHuman Function

Model (Melichar &Blackhurst,

1993).

1. Task2. Environment3. Skills4. Tools

Access, Productivity, Free, Portable and Online

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Points to Consider

• Most suitable input method

• Growth potential• Reliability• Durability• Portability

• Speed• Ease of learning and

use for each task• Compatibility• Cost• Preference

Various Types of TechnologyReading Talking books, e-books, DAISY• Scanner + OCR-program(Optical Character Recognition transforms the image of a text into editable text)• Scanner pens• Translation tools• Speech synthesisers

Spelling and Writing• Spell-checkers• Digital dictionaries• Word prediction systems• Speech recognition

Class and Project work• Digital note takers • Digital recorders and organisers• Digital whiteboards• Mind mapping or outliners• On-line tools

Organising time and communication

Finding information - Get to know your Browser!

• Remixing content, wikis, blogs, YouTube, Del.icio.us, tags, Flickr, pod and vodcasts – interaction and social networking

• Accessibar (Firefox), Web Accessibility toolbar (IE) for changing text size type, colours, background, zoom.

• ieSpell and similar Firefox add-ins for editing.

Organising information.

Reading and Understanding.

The Chislehurst cave entrance will entrance you, with Roman and Druid remains. There you’ll lead us with great effect, but watch it, as the compass will be affected by the red lead in the rocks. Also, particles will not diffuse in this atmosphere, it’s too diffuse. Do you think you’ll be all right?

Text Help Read and Write Gold with Daniel

Readthewords.com with Charles

Dspeech http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/

Spell checking

• Fail to pick up around 15 - 30% of our errors – choose carefully!

• Text revised on screen tends to be less concise - print out a double-spaced copy of your draft

• Words spelt the same (homonyms) or differently (homophones) but sound the same vary depending on geographical area and word type – use a spell checker with a dictionary.

Word PredictionWord completion and word prediction liberating

or limiting?

Know first few letters

Word retrieval difficulties

Poor keyboarding skills

Increases cognitive and perceptual load - searching the list of words

Looking up at the screen from keyboard – tracking and flow of ideas flounder.

Penfriend

Scanning and OCR• Kurzweil 3000 may maintain the documents in

the best format with all elements in place. • TextHelp Read and Write Gold and

AbbyReader may be best with PDF output.• ClaroRead Plus with Omnipage Pro may be

best with Word output.

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Decisions

www.mobileaccessibility.info

www.techmatrix.org www.emptech.info

Decisions for Text to Speech

Thank You

E.A. Draffan, ECS, University of Southampton. ead@ecs.soton.ac.ukwww.access.ecs.soton.ac.uk