Learning Disability – Assistive Technology Tools for Success

To follow up with the issues students with learning disabilities have to overcome, here are some free and/or open source solutions.

Of course this assumes that there is a PC, laptop or netbook available for use.

For reading (a major issue for students with learning disability), a good all around program which can open text and Word document files but also ePub files, Balabolka. Balabolka has text to speech capabilities and can save the file to a variety of audio formats with a few clicks.

For accessible eBooks, the old reliable, Project Gutenberg with over 36,000 books out of copyright and in the public domain. Project Gutenberg has expanded it's offerings to a variety of formats, including ePub, Kindle, Plucker and text. In some cases, there are also audio files, some of which are computer generated and some have recorded.

For writing,consider an alternative to MS Office – OpenOffice.org. Openoffice.org is a full featured office suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, drawing program, equation editor and a database program. All in all, almost the equivalent of MS Office Professional. The word processor is full featured and has add-ins for Zotero and a text-to-speech program (Read Text)

For mindmapping, XMind is a free open source organizational program.

For time and task management, Chandler is an open source program for adding tasks, appointments and alarms.

For more information and links, check out NPTraining.net.

Needs for Students with Learning Disabilities

Reading Writing and nope, not 'rithmetic, but time management and organization are major obstacles for students with learning disabilities. Fortunately, there are assistive technology tools to assist the learning disabled.

• Fifteen percent of the U.S. population, or one in seven Americans, has some type of learning disability, according to the National Institutes of Health.

• Difficulty with basic reading and language skills are the most common learning disabilities. As many as 80% of students with learning disabilities have reading problems.

Strategies to assist students with learning disabilities can range from the very simple to highly complex solutions. Assistive Technology can range from the simple to complex; free to extremely expensive.

There are assistive technology tools which are free to download as well as simple and easy to install and use. A number of these programs are open source programs, which allows other programmers to modify and extend them if needed.

There are shareware programs available, but often these programs are often limited time trials or have limited functionality encouraging the user to buy the premium version. Many of the open source programs run on operating systems other than Windows, providing even more flexibility. Among the programs are LibreOffice, Xmind, Balabolka and Chandler.

Most of these programs run on Windows and in addition, Microsoft Office and Windows 7 have other assistive technology features and programs. For instance, OneNote is now included in all versions of Office 2010.

The nice thing is new and updated assistive technology tools for people with learning disabilities become available almost daily.

For more information, www.NPTraining.net

.

LD Tools - Assistive Technology As A Side Effect

“If you are dyslexic and you use a computer to write it is assistive technology but if you are not dyslexic and you use a computer to write with it is not?” (Richard Wanderman, 2003)

Tools (or assistive technology) are aids to the learning process for both students with and without learning disabilities. These tools in many cases were not built to accommodate students with a learning disability but as a productivity tool for everyone. That they assist people with learning disability is an unintended consequence. 

Photo by ben124.

The word processor was not designed to assist with learning disability issues, but to replace the typewriter and improve and standardize the work a secretary could accomplish in a day. Adding in a spell checker reduced one more step in the proofing process before a final document was produced. Letting the original “author” do more initial edits and corrections, allowing the “secretary” to produce the final document with minimal rework.

About a year after my office automated, my boss stood in the middle of the office and simply stated, “The reason are secretaries aren't doing anything is WE aren't giving them anything to do!”

The word processor as an assistive technology tool that provides solutions for hand writing issues, spelling issues, organization issues and with additional addins' editing and proofing.

Just because a product is not labeled as an assistive technology tool for students with learning disability, doesn't mean it isn't. In the opposite direction, tools designed for those with a learning disability can be used by the main stream population.

As technologies merge, use of assistive technology tools will no longer brand the learning disability student as “different,” but as one more person using productivity tools.

Speech recognition is now mainstream in Windows 7, spell checkers and dictionaries have been mainstream since the first word processor, mind mapping and visual organizers were developed as advanced business productivity tools, audio books and ebooks (think accessible materials) are available mainstream.

UD (Universal Design) does work for all!

More information at NPTraining.net

Assistive Technology?

What is Assistive Technology (AT)?

Assistive technology is any device or

process that assists a person with a

disability to do something that could

otherwise be difficult or impossible to

accomplish.

 Photo by ugod

AT can range from extremely low tech to highly complicated and costly technology.

Reading glasses to High Tech Communication devices.

Not all AT however is hardware. Anyone with access to a computer can install any number of programs to help with a disability. The amazing aspect is that a number of these programs can help anyone – coming closer to the “Holy Grail” of UD (Universal Design).

We'll be looking at some of the free and/or open source software over the next few blogs.

AT and Learning

There a many resources to help with learning. Using Assistive Technology (AT) to help overcome a disability or even to simplify the learning process is only one step in learning.

The first step is a willingness to learn. The old maxim, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink” is especially appropriate for learning. The student has to be willing to learn and motivated to continue. Otherwise, the material becomes fodder for Trivia Night.

Learning should be a lifelong process and not just of the formal kind.

With public libraries and now the internet, knowledge and learning is available on demand in unlimited quantities.

AT is a necessity for those with disabilities, but it can help everyone learn and communicate better.

Do you (or your children/students) have a plan for continued learning?

If not, then you need to think about making one.