has ceased trading – but still producing valuable assistive technology information
21stCenturyDyslexia FLYER for DAW
This event focuses on ICT and in particular free and cheap apps to help with recording and learning. I will be presenting along with colleagues such as Jack Churchill from Scanning Pens. It should be a great event and is free! So do come along to County Hall, Bythesea Rd, Trowbridge from 6:30pm.
Crick Software are putting on a series of breakfast seminars which are free to teachers. These are taking place all over the country. The focus being on Dyslexia and how Clicker 7 can help overcome this learning barrier.
Click below for locations and booking details:-
Microsoft have announced that office 365 users can now have office installed on 5 devices on their office 365 personal user accounts .
Here’s the post:-
Working with people with learning disabilities involves a measure of paperwork and organisation of information to people who may have literacy needs. But also the support staff who help them need basic ICT skills to enable them to perform their role. The purpose of this post is to provide useful information and activities. We are concentrating on Word to begin with
Anything underlined is a link
Word Guides
Skills learnt
Microsoft have announced the Surface Go which is akin to the Surface Book but actually looks like a Surface. Confused? Yes! So am I! Not sure of the advantage but as I have said before the Surface Pro 2 I bought a few years ago is still the best PC I have ever used. It’s fast , 98% reliable and reasonable battery life at 2.5 hrs after several years! So I do like them. Therefore any new Surface device that runs Windows 10 ( and is not a cut-down version) is of interest.
Click below for a techspec:-
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/surface/devices/surface-go/tech-specs
Smartbox , the makers of Grid 3 are joining the Tobii Dynavox family of AAC as of the 1st October. This is a move to make the company more global and effective. To read more click on the link below:-
Robin Christopherson ( Head of Digital Inclusion), AbilityNet wrote this article about how usernames and passwords should give way to other means. Read his article here at:-
https://digileaders.com/new-log-in-put-end-passwords-good-for-disabilities/
The alternative is something called Fido2 – you can try this out at:-
https://www.noknok.com/trynow/
In essence this is what it does – it uses a range of methods to authenticate
Nok Nok provides a choice of any device, any platform and authentication method like tokens and biometrics voice, face, touch, iris and more. By eliminating friction, Nok Nok will increase user adoption of passwordless multifactor authentication, improve security posture and at much lower costs.
I confess I have not tried this for my site administration so over the next couple of weeks I will research it and get back to you on a blog on this. But it does sound feasible and doable.
I was helping a client with Parkinson’s recently who had other help from staff and relatives at his care home. It’s interesting that people think that by switching on ALL the access options you are helping the client when in fact you are disabling them!
Spent most of the time switching off options to just allow his speech to control the device. His hand function is lessened as the day goes on to the extent he can’t use a keyboard so some of the options such as magnification and onscreen keyboard don’t help. I also choose a lower resolution to make the screen clearer for the client. I switched off Magnifer(which had inverted the colour to make it doubly difficult to read) and also the on-screen keyboard as he uses his voice to type or a usb keyboard attached to the computer.
Interesting too that the one tool that would be useful didn’t appear on the desktop! Dragon sits in the tray until clicked on. This was another barrier. I had set it to run as a toolbar across the top to enable the client to say “wake up” and control the laptop totally with the one part of his body that works effectively.
Oh well. Onwards and upwards!
New addition for Grid ( for iPad) and Grid 3. Click on the link below:-
I discovered that if you have two echo dot devices you can set up an intercom system between rooms in your house. It is relatively straightforward to do. On the mobile Alexa App Go to settings and change the name of your device from its standard setting to one such as “Living Room” or “Office” or “Kitchen”. Now go to the speech bubble ( message) at the bottom of the screen. You can also click on “DropIn” you will see a list of devices or rooms to connect to. Tap on the one you want to use and voila after a delay of about 5-10 seconds you are talking to the person in that location.
Using the Echo Dot ( or Amazon Echo) it’s even simpler. Just say your wake word ” Alexa, Drop in Living Room.” The device ring becomes green and in about 5-10 seconds you are connected. That simple!
You might hit a problem where the device says it can’t find the”contact” then all you have to do is go through the setup on the device again and it seems to reconnect ok.
To help with doing this here is a short video to explain it:_
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