Assistive Technology for Reading Webinar

As a teacher, I am constantly looking for ways to improve my practices in the classroom. Today I listened to a webinar as part of an assignment for class. I am posting the link below as a great resource for you to visit. The site has webinars on a variety of topics. However, the topic that I am going to be discussing today is assistive technology for reading support. Fairly often in the classroom, we come across struggling readers or those with reading disabilities. Currently, I am working in a Kindergarten classroom so many of my students are having difficulty learning to read. Reading is a life long skill that is necessary for students. Assistive technology can help those struggling or with disabilities be successful.

http://www.gatfl.gatech.edu/tflwiki/index.php?title=Webinar_Archives

Key points...

• Text Reader: a software program that reads all the text in any given document of application. This is great for students with a reading disability, but adequate vision. Text reader includes reading the web, study tools and supports for writing. 

• Screen Reader: this reads all the text elements on the screen including menu bars, buttons, and boxes. This is ideal for students with visual impairments or reading disabilities.

• Text to Speech: this software includes many features to support reading...

Modify text interface (how the program reads, or chunks, the text)

Choice of high quality voices

Ability to control rate

Built in dictionary

Highlight and extract key information

Ability to insert, create or modify scaffold for reading (how cool is this, only a few programs have this feature!)

Convert to MP3

• Electronic Texts: the webinar provided multiple resources of where you can get electronic text from. 
• One that I really liked was https://www.bookshare.org/ which is all about making reading accessible to people with disabilities.