Toby Churchill Ltd. are preparing to launch a new communication aid, the Lightwriter Swift  - a pocket sized dedicated text-to-speech communication device - reportedly the smallest device of its type in the world.

You can see the new device on it's UK Launch Tour, in Edinburgh, at the Corn Exchange on 7th February 2012. Get the date in your diary now.

Sign up ASAP for a free morning, afternoon or evening (6pm) seminar - or just drop in to the 'Swift Cafe' between 10 am and 8 pm.

At this time of year, therapists and teachers often get asked by parents and grandparents for ideas about toys, gadgets or software that might make a suitable Christmas present for their family member who has access or communication support needs.

Without wanting to promote one supplier above any others, and with no commercial interest, we note that Liberator Ltd. has recently added some nice switch toys to their range, is selling a switch operated digital camera cheaper than some competitors, and also has just opened their 'Christmas Store' with a range of toys, switches and low tech communication aids, many at special 'Sale' prices.

For professional use, I liked the 3 for 2 low tech communication books

We have added a new section to the Books for All web site which gathers together all the quick guides and also the new video guides on the Education Scotland web site, into separate pages. It should be much easier to navigate and find the resources you need. 

We'll be adding to these in the coming months and if you have any suggestions for topics that need covered please add a comment or let us know.

CALL recently carried out an experiment to see how well a Toshiba netbook would cope with Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 (Dragon). Dragon is a speech recognition software package developed and sold by Nuance. The netbook used was a Toshiba NB250 which offers reduced computing power when compared to a full-sized laptop and Nuance don't recommend the software for use on a netbook.

Dragon seemed to run fairly well on a netbook and so we've uploaded the video of the Dragon software testing to YouTube which shows how well the netbook coped and also a comparison between running Dragon on a 1Gb and 2Gb RAM netbook.

If you're interested in speech recognition then you may also like to see a report produced by CALL entitled 'Speech Recognition software in SQA Assessments'.

Barnes and Noble's Nook Study was designed for downloading and reading eBooks purchased from Barnes and Noble, but it can also read PDFs. You have to register to download the software, but it is free to use. Simply use the Add Item facility to copy the PDF from your computer to the Nook Study library. If you open the document, it will appear with its PDF formatting intact in the Nook Study reader. Individual words are highlighted with an orange block when they are read. It uses the default voice on the computer - Heather in the case of my laptop.

CTRL-ALT-S activates speech, then the following commands are available:

• H - Help
• Space - Start / Stop Reading
• P - Start Page Over
• A - Go Back one sentence
• S - Restart current sentence
• D - Skip to next sentence
• R - Last phrase
• W - Currently focused element

Far from perfect, but a lot better than the Adobe Read Outloud facility, for reading PDFs if a school / parent hasn't got Read and Write Gold / PDFaloud / ClaroRead.

I had hoped that it could be used for digital exams, but the facility for typing into forms seems to have been disabled, though you can type into sticky notes.

When Adobe Reader X first appeared we tested it and said that it worked with PDFaloud 3.0 (see previous blog). This was true, on my ancient Windows XP laptop. However, we've now been using it for some months on a range of different machines and operating systems and it simply hasn't been reliable. On Windows XP, the Reader X/PDFaloud combination seems to work a lot of the time, but it's definitely bad news on Windows 7: I just got a new laptop and it doesn't work at all.

As previously reported, TextHelp are not going to upgrade PDFaloud 3.0 and have stopped selling it through Learning and Teaching Scotland.

TextHelp say that their latest Read and Write Gold 10 includes a version of PDFaloud which does work with Adobe Reader X, but Read and Write Gold is a lot more expensive than PDFaloud was (£1995 for a secondary school site licence).

So our advice is: stick with Adobe Reader 8 or 9; don't upgrade to Reader X. If you have to have Reader X, take a look at some of the text to speech tools listed in the previous blog.

Words of wisdom from the wonderful Jane Farrall, SLT at Spectronics in Oz. Everyone needs to read this. Keep reading into the second half of this short article. In summary, the iPad is fabulous but it is NOT necessarily the miracle answer to every aspect of all children's communication needs. Thanks Jane!

Jane's words reflects my own experience. It's really not an 'either / or' scenario. These days I often find myself recommending a complex specialised communication aid for school and as the 'main' resource for developing language and communication AND - yes!, why not? - a lovely iPod / iPad  (which often parents have already bought or are happy to buy themselves) for use at home/ for fun / in social situations/ out and about / when travelling etc.

But I get scared and angry when I hear about someone who has apparently recently 'advised' Scottish Government and local authorities that nobody needs an expensive communication aid any more, because an iPad and free or cheap Apps can do it all. This is an over-simplified and dangerously misleading approach that is not in the best interest of vulnerable children and adults who cannot easily speak up for themselves. People with complex communication support needs require the most appropriate and the best solution(s), not just the cheapest / most fashionable.

 

Jane Farrall in Melbourne Australia has just published on her blog a really useful step by step instructions for how to get a free book from the Tarheel Reader site into an iPad. Good way to make appropriate materials available without having to make them yourself. (You could also run the book online, which would be even quicker and easier, but downloading it as a powerpoint into iBooks means it can be always available and stay there for the child to enjoy again and again.

If you don't know about the TarheelReader site, go and have a look. There are many short and very simple stories there, freely useable and downloadable, made in Powerpoint, all with picture and speech support, one line of text, ideal for our emergent readers and learners with complex additional support needs. For example , see here, 'my cat is fat' (choose a voice on top left and off you go). (The quality can be a bit variable, so you do need to check before you select a book for a pupil. Some are a bit too 'American- mind you, there's nothing to stop us uploading our own books to the site, good idea!)

Haven't tried it yet, but this NASEN Award winning product, the Story Sequencer, looks like a usefully flexible (and pretty cheap) tool.

I have been weaning myself  - slowly  - off BoardMaker 6 and on to BoardMaker Studio. I love many of the clever new 'gadgets' for interactive use, though it's taking me a while to get to grips with some of the more complicated ones. I'll post a more comprehensive evaluation soon.

BUT the most annoying thing is how hard it's getting to simply copy and paste a symbol!

•  In BoardMaker 5 you just did a straight COPY from the Symbol Finder, and then PASTE into another document (nice transparent background)

• In BoardMaker 6, you have to click the symbol out of the Symbol Finder and then, from the drawing screen, Copy and then Paste it elsewhere. In the process, you lost the transparent background and acquired a white square background.

• But in Studio, you have to do all of the following:

File Menu > SetUp and Options > Symbols & Language > Symbol Manager > find the symbol you want > Edit in Image Editor (Paint) > select all > Copy. then Paste (or Save As) elsewhere (again, no transparent background).

(Or has anyone else found a better  / quicker way to do it??? Please tell me!)

Having to follow so many steps means it's a real pain to try and share visual information to communicate with parents or colleagues about which symbols are being taught and used etc.  and to adapt existing materials (eg. in Word) to be more Communication Friendly and Inclusive.

You have to wonder if Mayer Johnson have done this on purpose - they can't just have forgotten to include a Copy & Paste option!

Mind you - frustrated beyond words with this - on another occasion I ended up making my 'presentation in BM Studio instead of in Powerpoint, and it was very nice because it was actually quicker and easier to populate with symbols and other images, and also spoke (in the Scottish voice). So I learned to change my mindset (creak!) at least for that activity.

Which I suppose is the kind of solution that Mayer Johnson are aiming at.....  (But doing 'everything' in BM Studio will be hard for staff in schools that maybe only have one or two computers with it on.)

So  - I'd say Yes  - buy BoardMaker Studio and go for it!  Newcomers to BoardMaker certainly seem to love it. But don't upgrade ALL your copies - keep a secret copy of BM 6 somewhere in school. I'll be sticking with BM V6 for any graphic intensive work, for fast, detailed and fully independent symbol editing control.

Low Cost / No Cost Software

We occasionally give advice and talks on free / low cost software that can be used to help people with reading and writing difficulties, or other disabilities. While we would never advise somebody who needed a commercial package to make do with free software that has less functionality, there is certainly a place for free software, particularly for home use, or where a person only needs a couple of accessibility features to enable them to make effective use of a computer. These talks usually focus on the excellent AccessApps and MyStudyBar suites of free software, or on a collection of Windows-based programs, including WordTalk and Natural Reader, as described in our Quick Guide on Low Cost / No Cost Software to Support People with Dyslexia.

Mac Options

When we give these talks, we are often asked about similar options for Apple Mac computers. Unfortunately, although the Mac has been designed to be accessible for users with disabilities, the range of software to enhance accessibility is quite limited. We recently produced a Quick Guide on Free Text to Speech Options for the Mac, and will try to provide information on other options as we find them.

Black Light is the free Mac equivalent of ssOverlay, which allows a coloured filter to be placed over the computer screen. Such filters can be very useful for people with Meares-Irlen Syndrome / Scotopic Sensitivity, and also for people sensitive to glare from a computer screen. It is a little more difficult to find your desired colour with Black Light, compared with ssOverlay, but the program has some additional useful features, including an option to invert the screen colours so that you have white text on a black backgrounf, instead of the usual black on white.

Black Light provides a filter that covers the whole screen - if you need an 'overlay' that can be configured to only cover the portion you require (like T-Bar), a Mac user would, as far as we know, have to purchase a program like the ScreenRuler Suite from Claro Software.

There are still a few places available for any parent interested in coming along to Saturday's Parent Information Day on 12th November 2011. You can find out about and try many of the specialised technologies available to support children and young people with additional support needs. Following on from our everpopular annual Family Fun Technology Days, Saturday 12th November will have a similar format but this time it's just for parents.

The day will run 10.00 to 2.00pm at CALL Scotland and will be a mix of displays, presentations, hands-on and a chance for one-to-one sessions with CALL Scotland staff and, of course, meet other parents. Cost is £10 and a light sandwich lunch is provided.

 

Presentations

After consulting with parent members of National Parent Forum Scotland we’re running short presentations covering:

• Overview of CALL services
• Digital Question Papers
• Apps for iPad, iPod, iPhone - we're delighted that parent Kate Farrell agreed to run this session and be available on the day
• Books for All
• Low tech to high tech communication aids
• AccessApps / MyStudyBar / Windows 7 speech recognition

Workstations

Running in parallel with the presentations we'll have a range of workstations to try things out, discuss issues, have your questions answered. Topics include:

• Software for dyslexia including NaturalReader, ClaroRead, Dragon Naturally Speaking, as well as information about Reading Pens
• Digital question papers or digital exams - find out how many schools are using them, what teachers are doing to support their use and how successful they're proving with pupil in helping them to become independent, successful learners and confident individuals
• Books for All - how this can help schools and authorities meet their duties under the Equality Act 2010 to provide information in accessible alternative formats
• Apps for iPads, iPods, iPhones for symbols users, reading books, writing and a host of other education applications. 
• AccessApps, MyStudyBar and speech recognition directly into PCs running Windows 7
• Low tech as well as high tech communication aids - from symbol communication books, Personal Communication Passports through to dynamic screen display systems
• Alternative access to computers - switches, switch interfaces, adapted mice, keyboards and much much more

To find out more download the timetable for the day and you can book a place online.