Assistive Technology for Reading Webinar

 If you follow "Humans of New York" you may have seen this picture and caption.  Although this blog post is about writing, let's remember the impact teachers can have on a student.  We have the ability to make the school experience either the best or worst part of a students day.

Assistive Technology for Reading Webinar




Assistive Technology for Reading's webinar begins with the listener learning the differences between  text readers vs. screen readers.  Shonda Goldren explains that text readers, however is the primary focus of the webinar.

First, Bookshare is a way to get electronic materials.  It is an accessible on-line library and membership fees are waived for schools so long as students qualify, such as students who have impairments, like 504's or IEP students. 
The site's address is www.bookshare.org

 



Under "getting started" there is also a link to Youtube videos, which is a great way to support ALL your learners.

Second, on the website, you can access a "Text to Speech/Reading Support" Table.  The webinar explains a few of these software programs.

 

Although I have included a link to the webinar, here is a summary of the program and some additional information of how teachers can include assistive technology to help their readers.  According to this webinar, the quality of voices has become better over the years.  Higher quality voices come in programs that are paid for vs. free programs.  "Heather and Ryan" are the best voices, according to this webinar.  In addition, starting a student with text to speech, there is no stopping or as much natural inflection or summarization.  It is a straight read which is a difference to students.  You may want to only have your students read certain parts at a time or how long they are read to before they must interact with the program.  The teacher can choose how the text is read, such as self paced over continuous.  The breaks teach students the breaks that good readers already have during their reading.  Research says students will ask to read twice before the student gets embarrassed, according to this webinar.  Students who are struggling may need to read this 5x, however.  Yet text to speech can read this for the student.  In addition, text to speech can be found on iPhones.  Rate can also be controlled.  When first starting text to speech, rate SHOULD be slowed down making it easier for students to comprehend.  In addition, dictionaries are built in to these text readers.  It is also important to note that different programs do different things when highlighting information.  Some text readers allow teachers to modify or scaffold reading.  Some students cannot do a straight read and need guidance on what to pull from the text.  Text readers can also OCR  (Optical Character Recognition) documents, thus transforming picture to text.  Toolbars can be different as well for the different text readers.  You need to know your students and what they need; this is explicitly expressed in this webinar.  Using these programs does take time to set up, but does seem worth it.  Something that also seems neat is the ability to use a translater for your ELLs (some programs will even read with Spanish inflection!)