Thank you for a great year and to appreciate all what we have achieved together. I just wanted to wish you and yours a Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year,

This is advance notice that at the end of December 2024 I shall be retiring and therefore winding up AccessAbility Solutions.

I am 72 yrs old and due to a medical incident earlier this year which has led to a pacemaker fitted my body is telling me to slow down. In fact, I have always said that if my body is telling me this I should retire so that is my cue!

I have worked in the Special Needs and Assistive Technology area for 40 years and it’s been a privilege and honour to be at the forefront of so many assistive technology initiatives and projects such as “The Power of Assistive Technology” films series and the “Teachers for AT” Campaign.” You can still download the films and join the “Teachers for AT.”

I am stepping down from the British Assistive Technology Association Council, of which I have been a member since 2013. I am also ceasing my subcontracting for Neurobox. I may do the occasional conference or inset.

I am keeping going with AbilityNet as a County Co-Ordinator as I feel that is where my skills are really needed with an appropriate age group of seniors and disabled people.

It’s been a blast! Certainly the last 12 years of doing AccessAbility Solutions. Thank you for visiting here! I will keep this website going and post things that inspire and inform people so keep watching here.

Myles Pilling, 28.11.24

As always a great show that takes me back to my roots in education which was special educational needs teacher for severe and profound learning disabilities. In terms of new kit Dr Paul Blenkhorn and David Stephens have some exciting additions coming to their Sensory Readable software in the new year. Making use of Voice Access Control and Live captioning there are going to be new features that give instant text to speech feedback and the saving of live captioning into MP3 format if needed. This could have huge implications for hearing impaired students as well as those needed text to speech feedback for their work and studies. Really pleased to meet David and Paul as the first exhibitors to TechAbility 2024.

The actual conference itself proved to be very worthwhile and well planned. The have the keynote just after lunch was genius to allow people to get there and settle into the conference. I also love the hot topics sessions – a round table affair where things like Supporting the Supporters of AT and Professional Members for Assistive Technology were discussed. All good news and the right direction for us to take at this time in our history.

Rohan Slaughter gave a detailed and important lead on AT Competancy Framework based on research and practise. He did a brilliant job of collecting information from delegates and then recording this back live and comparing it to what a live team of research contributors have told him. The good news they were very compatible and we all felt we were all singing from the same hymn sheet by the end of the talk. I look forward to the research being published and more tools being developed that can help assessment and training to occur.

Training was the theme for Professor Jane Searle also as she has been looking at assistive technology for people with learning disabilities. She’s produced a set of videos with SeeAbility & the Open University to help train support/care workers to make effective use of AT. As someone who has been in this industry for as a long as I have means their is a kindred spirit who see the changes needed in our care system to make the phrase “ It’s not my job” as regards assistive technology for people with learning disabilities go away!

Thanks to Fil McIntyre and the TechAbility team for yet another great conference. I recommend you head over to the training section of the TechAbility website for some great resources that can help you. https://www.techability.org.uk/training/

discussingai.blog is now open and ready to take your comments, thoughts and ideas about artificial intelligence. Both Tereza and I feel the way forward is to start a debate on the subject and gather as many uses of ai that people care to share with us.

Working collaborative on this subject can help to have a healthy idea of ai and it’s use. We need a balanced and constructive approach which we can’t do with out your help. So please go across to https://discussingai.blog now and look at the content and add your own.

Look forward to reading your comments and content! It would be great if you could put some comments on the site so that we can move the conversation forward. Look at for news of conferences on AI that is taking place.

Probably in the next week or two depending on training commitments and family matters I might be launching a new website. Artificial Intelligence has become the “elephant in the room.” Some teachers embrace it, other teachers fear it and still other teachers see it as a threat to critical thinking.

It is the buzz word of the moment but what actual research is being done to compare these AI tools to ethical standards and criteria? The blog I am about to publish will explore the possibilities and give a chance for others to comment and make their contributions to the cause of seeing it’s potential and recognising the safeguards needed. Join the debate. I will be publishing soon and will give you a heads up when it’s ready to go!

Having a paperless office is a concept that was the aim and dream of every organisation and company. We now have the tools to go straight from tablet to cloud filing .

Cloud-based file storage has made the dream a reality. It offers the following

• Direct posting from a source device to the cloud
• Handwriting recognition software can translate any writing on a tablet into an electronic document.
• Having a sensible and clear filing method can enable work to be stored directly into a folder accessible to not only you but your PA’s and support assistants.
• Saves space rather than physical filing cabinets.
• Important to have a backup drives to avoid any loss of data and system of backuop- form daily through to monthly backups.
• Most cloud-based storage systems have their own backup systems.

Examples of cloud-based systems are:- Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive would be the main contenders and of course their other cloud-based systems to use the above are the most popular.

Security of data is extremely important and good systems have the ability to encrypt the data so one can access it without the proper authentication. This usually referred to as two-step authentication . One example of this would be Microsoft Authenticator which uses your mobile phone to verify a number visible on the cloud=based storage before accessing your files.

Without these methods data would be less secure. We have all heard of data being leaked by the use of USB devices, They can get lost and if not password protected will be a security risk. This is another reason for using the cloud. Even hard disks are not totally secure and safe. I have had hard discs fail and lost data that I cannot retrieve. Devizes that fail also can cause a data lost that is not recoverable.

So the ideal would be for mobile devices to connect to the cloud with automatic backup and linking directly to the folders you need your entries to go into.

Things to avoid are nesting. That is the creation of folders within folders. Losing your way around an electronic filing system. Having a clear understanding of your organisations filing system which could be done via a mindmap software that can show you the filing structure and ways you can access the folders. Such cloud-based systems are hierarchical and that suits the way mindmaps can be viewed – top down, left to right, etc. .
–