Author: AccessAbility Smyles

Feel pleased that with a little bit of ingenuity we have a working solution for a young Cerebral Palsy man who is about to attend college.

On assessment, it was clear my initial thoughts about voice control wouldn’t work. The young man in question vocalizes but it is far from clear. So an alternative input is required. He uses touch well and therefore screen access is possible, but with accuracy that is difficult.

His wheelchair access – a joystick – does actually give him access and so we connected it to Bluetooth on his Lenovo M10 Plus which is slightly bigger than it’s usual counterpart by a couple of cm’s around. That does make a difference for users. Something portable was needed and so giving this as a solution means that he can easily have it with him. A non-slip material to help with keeping the position.

He uses the left and right button icons on his wheelchair as this make allows computer access which is wonderful for a great solution. A win win for him and for me in providing a workable assistive technology solution that did scratch our heads for a while until we took apart all the needs and built a better, cleaner, more effective solution.

If you need an excuse to keep using the Chrome browser then look no further than this gem of an extension. Free to use to up to 25 little videos this could be an excellent tool for teaching and learning remotely.

Videos can be shared over social media to LinkedIn, Google mail and X (formily known as twitter). Sadly you have to pay for a download option. Great little tool though. Here is the example I recorded early as an embedded video

What is also good for those who need captions is that it can be switched on and enabled as well as giving real-time reaction emojis. Also comments can be left in realtime to the user.

The films are released and available for schools and education settings who want to use them. They are free and can be used either as a series or stand-alone episodes each lasting approximately 20 minutes.

Here is a snippet to wet your appetite for this film series

the power of assistive technology

If you want to learn more of Kiana’s journey them please go to :-

http://bataonline.org/impact and click on “Give Me Access!”

For the past two years I have been working with BATA ( British Assistive Technology Association on producing films for schools that show the power of assistive technology. These 3 films are for staff meetings, INSET days, Teacher Training and Assemblies. Each film can stand alone or be used as a series. They last between 15-20 minutes to allow time for discussion. For more details and to express an interest go to https://bataonline.org/impact

Since 2017 I have been mapping to the curriculum apps that can be used in teaching and learning. I evaluate them for particular skills such as writing in sentences, what the purpose of the app is and most importantly what the next skill would be. My goal was to make apps more of a progression rather than an end in itself.

I didn’t want this to be just my ideas of what apps are recommended but one where people can share their apps with us to add to a growing database. The result is the App Mapping Database. To date 199 apps have been added to the database. Why not add your favourite app by clicking here