To celebrate Autism Awareness Week Christy Clawson (wondermums) sent me links to help with parents and carers
Category: Uncategorized
Google plays music – for free!
” You didn’t tell me about this !”
This is my greeting with a blind client this week. But I am not offended easily and always on the lookout for new uses of the Google mini. If you say “Hey Google, Play music from the 50’s ” it will tell you that you haven’t got a subscription and then offer you a streaming station which plays non-stop music . Try it out yourself if you have a google mini. You can flip through the songs by saying ” next song” if you don’t like what it plays and tell it to stop when you have finished.
Visual Thesaurus
Finding that word or just trying to find an alternative word can be difficult and frustrating . This is why i like a visual thesaurus that shows the link between words that are related to the root word.
ThesaurusFree is an app that does just that. And as the title states its free as well.
Have this as part of your toolkit for pupils with special needs.
Assistive Technology in Education
I have just had an article I wrote for nasen published in the March edition of nasen connect. Hopefully, this will start a debate about the role of Assistive Technology in the UK. Since BECTA has gone there are no goto places for Information on using ICT as an Assistive Technology or a teaching and learning tool
Where do schools learn about Assistive Technology? I think it’s a bit hit and miss and we need to challenge schools who say its too expensive and deny SEN pupils their opportunity to show their ability. What do you think?
Drug advice for ADHD
Thanks to Sharina for this helpful resource about drug use with ADHD. An area where information and research needs to be made more widespread and available as little is actually known about the long-term effects of drug use with ADHD. This article looks at the reasons why drugs are being used by people with ADHD.
Tap
This is a new way to control a keyboard by wearing these rings on your finger and typing in the air with combinations of finger movements. Similar to the old Quinky device but brought into the 21st Century. Hopefully I have been provised a set to evaluate and will feedback on how they are used in the meantime here is some information
Sound Solutions
At #bettshow2019 I came across this company. They provide a mobile sound field which helps everyone including teachers saving their voice ! They not only do soundfields using the last bandwidth DAB frequency they also look at how to make environments more sound friendly to all – not just the hearing impaired. Lovely people – swing by their website and see what they have to offer you. http://www.rgsoundsolutions.co.uk
Orcam MyReader
I have been working with a client who has severe visual impairment and just this weekend we bought an Orcam My Reader device. She is an author and finds large magnification of text very difficult to practical use as she reads ahead for meaning and the slowness of the magnification way makes that difficult. Using the Orcam to review her research for addition to her book having a tool like Orcam that can read the text back to her both from printed and screen materials on a computer/mobile device is just amazing for her. If you want to know more details check out this video clip. It is for the Orcam MyEye – both MyReader and MyEye have similar functions but the MyEye does facial and product recognition whereas the MyReader is just for reading and it’s slightly cheaper. Both devices cost between £2,000 -£3,000 depending on which device and what accessories are required:-
Twin Science
Twin Science are a new company with good ideas for control technology in schools for blind and braille users. These bricks are tactile friendly and labelled with braille so the user knows what they are handling
Also they have a nifty attachment to your blind stick which makes it a smart stick. You can connect with alexa, and answer your phone from the stick handle. Magic for blind users!
details about the company to follow!
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New look aas123.org.uk
I have a sister site – well really it was meant to be more of one site that catches all in concept rather than this blogsite. In truth I run two sites! aas123.org.uk is where one day I am to develop a small online shop of resources. At the moment I prefer to give freely and promote the cause of Assistive Technology in the UK. Do take a look at aas123.org.uk . And tell me what you think?
AccessAbility Solutions 