Assistive Technology Employer Resource Kit

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Click this button to return to this page at any time Assistive Technology Employer Resource Kit Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Index This document is interractive, you can use the following buttons to navigate through Click on an arrow ( ) below to go directly to that chapter Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR)with printed text Page 3 Accessibility with PDF files Page 9 Text-to-speech Page 15 Text-to-audio & sound editing programs Page 23 Onscreen keyboards Page 31 Word prediction Page 39 Spell checker & Thesaurus - Dictionary supports Page 47 Mind mapping & flow charting software Page 55 Note taking software Page 65 Daisy Reader software Page 69 Word processors Page 75 Speech recognition Page 83 Literacy support for ESL Page 91 AccessApps Page 97 SECTION1 Section 1 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) with Printed Text Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section / Name  3  In this section Using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) with Printed Text documents or purely as text. Various OCR programs provide the speed, accuracy, quality and features to maximise the benefits of current scanning or all-in-one devices. Note: The device needs to be OCR capable or can save/convert a file in a format that can be used by scanning software. Introduction Background to OCR and Scanners Scanners - Handheld, Portable & Flatbed devices Scanning Text using Different Formats Commercial and Free Software that Perform OCR Assistive Software to Access Scanned Documents Universal Access using OCR With most flatbed scanners, photocopiers or printer-scanner models, converting information that was formerly ‘locked’ on paper or in digital files into a preferred format, is made simpler and easier than previously imagined. Just load the print material, convert it and it is ready to re-use. you are able to edit the text, alter or enlarge the font, remove or reposition sections or have it voiced using text-to-speech programs or converted to braille. Files can be emailed, copied to USB drives, printed and stored for future reference. In Conclusion Introduction Optical Character Recognition (usually referred to simply as OCR) software has been used for many years in education, research and business. It provides access to text in all manner of printed materials. OCR software makes it easy to re-use and access existing printed or online documents with perfect formatting. Converted documents can look exactly like the original – complete with colour, columns, tables, bullets and graphics. Optical character recognition ‘is the mechanical or electronic translation of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text.’ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition] Any scanning device can benefit from the power of unlocking and sharing information stored on paper as accurately reproduced digital documents. They can be reversioned as PDF, MS Word, HTML 4  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit People who find reading paper based material difficult or impossible, as well as vision impaired users, have a solution that can be portable using hand held scanners, or even mobile phones! Printed material can be accessed electronically with a camera or mobile phone and converted to text. ‘CapturaTalk software - uses high quality, natural sounding voices to read text out loud captured either from a photograph or an electronic document.’ [Source: http://www. capturatalk.com/]. It will allow you to take a photo of some text on a page or in a newspaper or journal, and then CapturaTalk will then scan the photograph, recognise the text using the OCR and read the information aloud with the text-to-speech function. A portable, socially acceptable and functional solution! Even TopOCR, a free portable OCR application in AccessApps, runs from a USB memory stick or thumb drive. Simply capture a photo with text, send the file to a computer, run AccessApps and start TopOCR software. Load the file and it will not only convert the text but also read it out aloud. AccessApps is freely available to download and use: http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/ accessapps/. Background to OCR and Scanners Optical character recognition (using optical techniques such as mirrors and lenses) and digital character recognition (using scanners and computer algorithms) were originally considered separate fields. Because very few applications survive that use true optical techniques, the OCR term has now been broadened to include digital image processing as well. Early systems required training (the provision of known samples of each character) to read a specific font. “Intelligent” systems with a high degree of recognition accuracy for most fonts are now common. Some systems are even capable of reproducing formatted output that closely approximates the original scanned page including images, columns and other non-textual components. In 1974, Ray Kurzweil started the company Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and led development of the first omni-font optical character recognition system - a computer program capable of recognizing text printed in any normal font. He decided that the best application of this technology would be to create a reading machine for the blind, which would allow blind people to understand written text by having a computer read it to them out loud. However, this device required the invention of two enabling technologies--the CCD flatbed scanner and the text-to-speech synthesizer. [Source: http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition] The application of OCR has broadened far more widely than he would ever have considered. Scanners – Handheld, Portable and Flatbed devices The type of scanner most commonly sold to homes, schools and businesses is referred to as an A4 flatbed scanner. There is a wide market for these scanners and, as such, there is a wide range of products available, priced from under $100 to many thousands of dollars. The under-$1000 market is very popular in the home and small business environments and provides a diverse variety of scanner products to the market from dozens of different vendors. In education, scanners have been popularly used to acquire maps, drawings, slides, photographs and other images in art and design departments and science laboratories. Teachers have purchased them predominantly for these purposes whereas in the past 10 years, some educators in special needs departments have been accessing text using the OCR capabilities. Scanning technology is available in numerous devices, from the enterprise wide photocopiers that can broadcast and copy/send content to servers and intranets, to scanner/printers with phone and fax capabilities, to stand alone desktop and portable scanners, even to applications that operate on PDAs and mobile phones. a. Scanner Set-up Users need to install a ‘driver’ program so that their scanning device will work with their computer and scanning software. Virtually all scanners come with TWAIN drivers, which Section 1 - Using OCR with printed text  5  Using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) with Printed Text most scanning applications support. High-speed document scanners usually come with ISIS drivers, which tend to be more standardized and offer better performance with faster scanner models. Many production-scanning applications use ISIS drivers. The driver usually comes packaged on a CD or DVD with the device (i.e. the dedicated scanner, printer-scanner, photocopier or other device). If this cannot be located, most manufacturers provide free support with the appropriate driver software on their web site. It is simply a matter of locating the appropriate driver and installing it onto a desktop computer or Notebook. b. Scanner Specifications Scanner specifications vary model by model. It depends on what you want to achieve and the most common tasks that will be performed. • Workload - estimate the number of daily scans you need to make to find scanners that meet high demand • Duplex - scans both sides of the page at once for 2-sided documents, ideal for books and high volume scanning • Colour - colour scanning as well as greyscale and black & white scanning • Flatbed - is a flatbed or has a flatbed surface. Hinged lids provide for large books and texts. • ADF - has a document feeder only • Multi-Feed - uses Ultrasonic Multi-Feed Detection to prevent missed pages • Auto-Crop - the ability to automatically detect the sizes of mixed pages • Imprint - scanners that offer built-in or optional imprinter/ endorser units • Paper Size - maximum paper size (some devices will scan up to A3 in size) • Feeder Capacity - maximum number of pages that you can store and use in the paper feeder • Interface Type - connection to the computer, most commonly USB, formerly parallel or SCSI • DPI – DPI or dots per inch, referred originally to the ability of phototypesetting image setters to write small details and smooth looking type. Today this phrase refers to how many pixels one has, which is image structure (defined below) and not resolution. • Resolution is the finest detail between which a scanner can see • Image Structure - refers to how many pixels an image have. • TWAIN – a standard used by many programs to ‘acquire’ an image 6  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Scanning Text using Different Formats Capturing an image can be performed in a number of ways. The Dots per Inch (dpi) is an important consideration as the file size grows exponentially with more ‘dots’. Increased resolution means greater clarity and usually improved performance and accuracy. Scanning in greyscale may result in better overall recognition that in colour. Some paper or material (e.g. magazines) may cause problems with glossy surfaces. These are issues that require attention ad some scrutiny when first experimenting and using OCR software The most likely formats that will enable individuals to work with text in meaningful ways include: • Text - Pre text that can be opened in Notepad or WordPad or other text editing programs • Large Print- Using a variety of software programs with text-to-speech (ReadPlease 2003) • MP3 or Audio format - Edited in a text editor and then converted to a sound format (TextAloud) such as MP3 • MS Word - Edited in versions of MS Word, MS Works, Open Office Org or other word processing programs • PDF - This can be a useful format but has some restrictions in Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader • HTML - Ready to edit in a variety of programs and FTP’d to web sites and Intranets • Proprietary Programs - For use in publishing programs or art and design software • Braille - For users who require tactile format in braille Commercial and Free Software that Perform OCR There are two OCR applications that compete for the title of most accurate. These are Nuance OmniPage and ABBYY FineReader. Which application is more accurate often depends on the specific documents in question. One application may handle a particular type of page layout better than the other. With the almost infinite variety of document layouts, fonts, table structures and other variables it is impossible to say that one application will always be better than the other. TextHELP has chosen ABBYY FineReader over OmniPage to be included in its Read & Write software. ABBYY FineReader reputedly provides a more consistent formatting for fonts, bold and italics. Documents OCR’d with OmniPage are more likely to have variations in darkness recognized as bold or italic. This does not speak directly to the accuracy of the underlying text, but having to correct a great deal of formatting is a significant task for those seeking to recreate Word documents from a scan. Over a large sample of documents, both products offer very comparable accuracy. However Abbey FineReader seems to be the premier application due to their superior customer service. Scanners and printer-scanners must be OCR capable. Some are more reliable and faster than others in their operation. Software that is ‘bundled’ with the device is usually a ‘lite’ version. It is still functional and useful but is not the full version of that company’s software. Commercial OCR Software: • • • • • • • OmniPage V16 http://australia.nuance.com/omnipage/standard/Abbey ABBYY FineReader http://www.abbyy.com/company/ Readiris Pro 11 http://www.irislink.com/c2-209-225/Readiris-for-Windows.aspx Readsoft (more business oriented application) http://www.readsoft.com/ MS Office OneNote 2007 http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/onenote/default.aspx CuneiForm Pro 6 (shareware) http://www.ocr.com/ PaperPort Deluxe V11 - ideal for working electronically with scanned documents – it will read and work with PDF and TIFF files. It is ideal for users who have physical disabilities and who need to work directly with documents. http://www.nuance.com/paperport/ OCR Freeware and web services: • • • • SimpleOCR- a very useful free program with some great features http://www.simpleocr.com/ FreeOCR V2.6 http://www.softi.co.uk/freeocr.htm TopOCR - for digital cameras and phones. A portable version is also available in AccessApps - http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/ http://www.topocr.com/ Microsoft Office Document Imaging In Office 2003 and 2007, as part of the Microsoft Tools Web sites can also be used to convert files, rather than scanning them. People often wonder why you might want to scan an electronic file – but it is required when you wish to obtain just the text and dismiss the graphics or reversion it for the web. A useful site is Zamzar (www. zamzar.com). You can elect to convert one or more files from one format to the other e.g. MS Word to PDF or PDF to HTML. The file(s) can be up to 100MB and it is a free service. By nominating an email address the converted file or files are emailed to the user after a time period. It is ideal when users do not possess or have relevant software on the machine that is being used. For example, accessing the text from an MS Publisher file so as to study or read it using text to speech software. Even without MS Publisher, the user can obtain access to the contents in another more user or accessibility friendly format. Section 1 - Using OCR with printed text  7  Using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) with Printed Text Assistive Software to Access Scanned Documents Programs that make the entire process easier and more accessible for students include • textHELP Read & Write V9 www.texthelp.comn or www.spectronicsinoz.com • ClaroRead for PC 2008 www.clarosoftware.com/ or www.spectronicsinoz.com • Kurweil 3000 www.kurzweiledu.com • Wynn Wizard from Scientific software www.freedomscientific.com/LSG/products/WYNN.asp or locally from http://www.quantech.com.au/wynn These software programs all provide quick and elegant access to print materials together with learning supports, including spell checking, thesaurus and dictionaries, text to speech with human sounding voices, text-to-audio conversion and many other visual and auditory features. Universal Access using OCR Previously, individuals who could not read at all, read fluently or comprehend print material due to the complexity or use of terms and language were severely disadvantaged. Equitable access to reading precluded them from enjoying printed text. Someone in their family, or an aide or other educator or therapist would have to read content to them, sometimes their own work! Scanning using OCR provides independence. It also allows print-disabled, blind and vision impaired users the opportunity to read anything, anywhere using hand held scanners and adapted mobile phones. Individuals can function in a text rich society where reading and writing is seen as being paramount to study and employment. In Conclusion This article is a brief discussion into some of the issues raised when speaking about OCR and its implications for employment and learning. People need access to data and literature, whether it is for fun, leisure, research, and study purposes or for daily living. Scanning a label on a can of soup, or a packet of goods in a supermarket and having a hand-held scanning device read the small print is extremely liberating for people. Scanning a newspaper and listening to an article assists the elderly and vision impaired. Being able to scan a worksheet and complete it on a Notebook computer and then email or print a hard copy for proof reading or assessment should be commonplace in our schools and Universities for our students. The power and functionality of OCR should not be relegated to a 8  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit niche audience. Scanning equipment and OCR should be regarded as universally applicable technology and be promoted to and made available by all users and be provided where and when it is required. Resources A very useful article is one written by E.A. Draffan – ‘Alternative formats One Year On’ which can be located at: http://www.altformat.org/index. asp?pid=233&ipname=AU. This is a comprehensive article as well as other discussions on alternate text for learning as well as up-to-date resources, papers and web links. Assistive Technology for Learning Disabilities at ANU has some excellent background material and links to suppliers and providers http://www.anu.edu.au/disabilities/atproject/learning_disabilities/ at_learning_disabilities.php. SECTION2 Section 2 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Accessibility with PDF Files Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 2 - Accessibility with PDF Files  9  In this section Accessibility with PDF Files Introduction Background to Adobe PDF format Creating PDF Files Commercial and Free Software that Convert and Read PDF Files Assistive Software to Access PDF Universal Access to Print Material Conversion Software In Conclusion Introduction Portable Document Format (PDF) is the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world. It is ‘….a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout 2-D document (and, with Acrobat 3-D, embedded 3-D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2-D vector graphics which compose the documents.’ [Source: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_ Format ] 10  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Therefore it can be gainfully employed on MS Windows, MAC OS and Linux as well as other operating systems. There are also versions that run on portable hand held devices such as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and even mobile phones! Background to Adobe PDF format The Adobe Acrobat V9 program is a commercial product that provides all of the necessary tools and functions to create PDF files from every possible source file. Users can edit and manipulate their own PDF files, and with some limitations, edit other PDF documents. Most importantly for critical and sensitive material, creators can protect information in a number of ways to maintain the document’s integrity or ensure privacy. Text can be embellished with charts, maps, drawings and photographs. Many companies that produce teaching, resource, factual and other related learning and study media have used the ubiquitous PDF standard for efficient and global delivery using CDs, DVDS and in latter years, web sites. Early user manuals were previously published on floppy disks. Now millions of documents are created daily and distributed in every possible enterprise and for a multiplicity of uses. The introduction and proliferation of the World Wide Web witnessed an explosion of deployment of PDF documents, as it is time and very cost effective. Anyone can read the documents, print and to a degree, edit part or the entire document. The necessary protocols and restrictions provide for security but disenfranchise some users – especially those who have different learning styles, vision impairment or other special learning, reading or access needs. As a file standard, it is program independent and there are now many free readers – including the latest version from the originators of the software – Adobe Systems. The freely downloadable Adobe Reader is now at version 9.0 - [http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/ ]. Other readers are available include Free PDF Reader - Version 3.5.70 http://www.visagesoft.com/products/pdfreader Free PDF Reader http://www.visagesoft.com/products/pdfreader/. Cool PDF Reader is small fast, free and efficient http://www.pdf2exe.com/reader.html Initially, the program was not readily accepted nor widely used. It had some limitations and was not that web friendly nor did it conform to prevailing standards. Adobe started distributing its Acrobat Reader (now Adobe Reader) program at no cost. It eventually became the de facto standard for printable documents on the web (i.e. a standard web document). There were early competitors but the PDF standard soon eclipsed other products and was universally accepted as being the pre-eminent document “handler” In legal circles, business, research as well as academic use, it quickly became very popular. The doPDF V6.2 program installs itself as a virtual PDF printer driver. After downloading and installing this handy utility, it will appear in your Printers and Faxes list. To convert to PDF, you just have to print the document to doPDF. You nominate where the file is to be saved, and you can then open, read and print it. You can export a document in Open Office Org V3.01 as well : http://www.openoffice.org/index.html. Commercial and Free Software that Convert and Read PDF Files Creating PDF Files Once again, apart from Adobe Reader V9, there are some competitors including Foxit Reader V3 (formerly it was a freeware program at no cost) - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php. It is very fast and opens PDF files quickly. It has some great features and performs all tasks similarly to Adobe Reader. Other options include: Smart PDF Converter http://www.pdftodocconverterpro.com/download.htm PDF Creator http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ AllPDFConverter http://www.pdfonline.com/products/allpdf/index.htm Print2PDF V8 http://www.software602.com/products/print2pdf/download.html Nitro PDF Professional - a powerful commercial program http://www.nitropdf.com/index.asp Pdf995 - various free options (with pop up browser ads) http://www.pdf995.com/download.html Inkscape V0.46 a free, open source vector graphics-based program http://www.inkscape.org/ Primo PDF - Reputedly superior to some others in its unobtrusiveness and print quality. There are no nag-screens, watermarks, reminders and is simple to learn, master and use www.primopdf.com/primopdf_free_idx.htm PDF XChange Viewer - is very configurable with ‘Sticky Notes’, annotations, screen captures, highlighting, searches - and again, is unobtrusive. A great tool if students wish to read a large PDF and want to make notes. All notes, highlights saved during editing are readable by any PDF viewer www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/pdfx_ viewer As well as Adobe Acrobat V9, there exist numerous other products at various price points. Many commercial products compete in this area of the market. There are many others that offer different levels of functionality. Some will run on MAC OS or Linux. It ultimately depends on what users wish to achieve and intended uses and purposes. A PDF file can be opened as a web page (usually opening in a new window in MS Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) or one or more files can be saved and downloaded and then opened in an application of the user’s choice. A popular program CutePDF Writer (formerly PDF Printer) http://www. cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp writes or “prints” files on the computer to PDF. Accessed from the Print Menu, it provides quick and easy conversion. Another similar option is doPDF - http://www.dopdf. com/download.php . Section 2 - Accessibility with PDF Files  11  Accessibility with PDF Files Assistive Software to Access PDF As PDF files can be difficult to read, or navigate, there have been some excellent innovations from a number of different companies who support users who have special needs. The highly regarded textHELP company in Ireland provide PDF Accessibility Editor in textHELP Read & Write software, which has just been released as V9. PDF Accessibility Editor is a set of tools designed to work with Adobe Acrobat which allow the Publisher to dramatically improve the end-user accessibility experience when reading PDF files. The key benefits include: • Ability to define the reading order of the document • Fine tune the pronunciation of words and alternate text • High quality speech feedback with highlighting in Adobe Acrobat. update to the Wordtalk program even converts the text into MP3 or WAV format. WordTalk is a free text-to-speech plug-in developed for use with all versions of Microsoft Word (from Word 97 upwards). It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary to help decide which word spelling is most appropriate. www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/ Another option is to paste copied text into a fresh window in ReadPlease 2003. This program has a few limitations but it can read files with many other languages i.e. French text spoken in a French speaker’s voice, as with Italian, German, Spanish and other languages. These are also free to download, install and use. www.readplease.com Another leading assistive technology company in the UK is Claro Software. PDF files are ideal mostly for printing but they can be really difficult to use if you want them voiced aloud or you want to quickly change the colours and fonts used. People with dyslexia and many other users, find it easier to work with text when it is spoken aloud or has different colours or contrast. You can zoom in and out, use high or low contrast colours, and save your PDF as text or reversion it as a web page. You can even follow internal contents links to let you navigate the document. ClaroRead software has always allowed PDF files to be spoken aloud, and also converted into Microsoft Word format with the ClaroRead Plus edition. They wanted to give users more options for PDF files to be spoken aloud, so the company produced a standalone Accessible PDF reader, which is available as a free download. It will convert accessible PDF Files into a web page style retaining the original format and layout or a simple text only view. It can be downloaded freely from http://www.clarosoftware.com/index.php?cPath=314 A very handy free text-to-speech program is Natural Reader – It uses SAPI 4 and the higher quality SAPI 5 voices. The program can be used as a floating toolbar. By selecting text with Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader, the user can listen to text being voiced aloud. www.naturalreaders.com. Another option is to cut and paste the text into MS Word and have it voiced using either WordTalk V4 – within the document. This new 12  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Another extremely useful option is AccessApps. This is a suite of applications that are known as Portable Apps. They are installed onto external memory drives e.g. thumb or USB drives and provide a number of inclusive software applications that are all easily accessible from a menu system, including DSpeech. DSpeech is another text-to-speech program that has some great benefits. It operates from a USB drive so it does not need to be installed on the computer being used. http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/ Universal Access to Print Material People have different needs. They have acquired different skills and understandings, along with experience and frequently, some tuition - or none at all. Increasingly, study materials, user guides, manuals, instruction and study sheets and FAQS (Frequently Asked Questions), journals and numerous online magazines are being published as PDF documents. Flyers and promotional material, maths and science text books, e-Books and even invitations are used every day and are available from a variety of on and offline sources. You seemingly cannot escape the ever present PDF format! Conversion Software Adobe has a web based subscription solution at http://createpdf.adobe. com/. There is a cost though. The Zamzar site - http://www.zamzar. com/ is extremely useful and user friendly. A user needs only to nominate an email address for delivery of a converted file – up to 100MB in size. The user simply browses his or her computer, uploads a file and selects PDF as the conversion standard. Within a short time frame, the converted file is sent via email with the newly created PDF as an attachment to the designated address. Other file types are supported as well and so it is an extremely useful service! As mentioned previously the CutePDF Writer and doPDF utilities will convert documents to PDF. In Conclusion This article will, hopefully shed some light onto this important area of access to text and other print and online material. The PDF standard has so many wonderful features and attributes. People, who design, plan, coordinate and provide training need to more fully understand why and how they are providing PDF files. They also need to take responsibility in how to direct, assist and accommodate a wide range of users who all potentially have different access, reading and learning needs. If not, some individuals will only continue to be frustrated and their access to data minimised and future options compromised. Section 2 - Accessibility with PDF Files  13  SECTION3 Section 3 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Text-to-Speech Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section / Name  15  Text-to-Speech In this section Introduction Background to Text-to-Speech Technology Implications for Users who Struggle with Text Benefits of TTS for Students Voicing Text using Different File Formats Commercial and Free Software for Text-to-Speech Portable TTS Solutions Documents In Conclusion Introduction Text-to-Speech (TTS) has been much maligned and misunderstood. This enabling and liberating technology has been available since the advent of personal computers. Numerous TTS programs offer features and have capabilities that provide access to electronic text, scanned text (using OCR), onscreen menus, dialogue boxes (screen reading 16  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Literacy support tools such as textHELP Read & Write and ClaroRead for PC 2008 have multiple TTS features that provide universal support across all computer applications and tasks. Background to Text-to-Speech Technology Converting Text to Audio File Formats such as JAWS or Thunder) as well as support in word processing software. Some programs will speak the contents of the clipboard (Cliptalk or Deskbot), others require text to be copied then pasted into a window (ReadPlease 2003, Helpread or DSpeech), whilst others run and function as a floating (e.g. Natural Reader) or in a specific toolbar within an application (e.g. Wordtalk). ‘Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware. A text-to-speech system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech. Synthesized speech can be created by concatenating pieces of recorded speech that are stored in a database. Systems differ in the size of the stored speech units; a system that stores phones or diaphones provides the largest output range, but may lack clarity. For specific usage domains, the storage of entire words or sentences allows for high-quality output. Alternatively, a synthesizer can incorporate a model of the vocal tract and other human voice characteristics to create a completely “synthetic” voice output. The quality of a speech synthesizer is judged by its similarity to the human voice and by its ability to be understood.’ How it All Works ‘A text-to-speech system (or “engine”) is composed of four parts: a front-end and a back-end. The front-end has two major tasks. First, it converts raw text containing symbols like numbers and abbreviations into the equivalent of written-out words. This process is often called text normalization, pre-processing, or tokenization. The front-end then assigns phonetic transcriptions to each word, and divides and marks the text into prosodic units, like phrases, clauses, and sentences. The process of assigning phonetic transcriptions to words is called text-to-phoneme or grapheme-to-phoneme conversion. Phonetic transcriptions and prosody information together make up the symbolic linguistic representation that is output by the front-end. The back-end, often referred to as the synthesizer, then converts the symbolic linguistic representation into sound.’ [Source: Wikipedia - http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis] Text-to-Speech (TTS) software has existed ever since the early micro computers appeared in homes and schools in the early 1980’s. Special voice cards or external synthesizers (e.g. Echo II on Apple II computers) provided robotic, synthesized male voices. Programs that offered voice feedback often just used the small low-quality computer speaker to speak aloud the key words, commands and phrases. The voices were approximated and of low quality and volume – but critically provided access to computers for blind and vision impaired users. Choice was limited, yet users who required voiced instructions, directions and feedback were grateful for the pioneers of early TTS technologies. As computers became more powerful and processors increased in speed and power, software companies added higher quality voice and TTS to programs. Often voice was a human voice speaking menu items, dialogue box instructions or explaining the program’s navigation. These small amounts of voice took up valuable program storage space and so were limited due to the prevailing 5.25” and 3.5” disk technology, especially pre hard drive configurations in PCs. Early TTS word processing and text editing software (e.g. Dr Pete’s TalkWriter and IntelliTalk V1) began to appear along with small utility applications (e.g. MacTalk on Macintosh computers). MacTalk was a revelation as the speech quality was more acceptable and the range and variety of voices were more advanced than program on other platforms (e.g. BBC, Amiga, Atari and early IBM DOS). Funny or amusing voices such as parrots, robots ‘silly’ voices were fun for younger children and eventually some female voices began to appear. The TTS programmers designing and improving this technology were usually working in the southern states of America. The voices had an American sound, were still quite robotic, nasally and had an ‘accent’. Some found this challenging, yet students of all ages worked with the technology as it provided opportunities to interact with software, listen to instructions, word process with auditory feedback and for blind and vision impaired students, provide access to computers! Implications for Users who Struggle with Text The written word on paper or on a screen can liberate or disadvantage individuals who have had poor or minimal experience with a language such as English, often fail in reading, writing, comprehension - or all three. The number of people who disguise their inability to read and write is quite common and prevalent. They continue to progress by using other strategies tin order to stay ‘under the radar’. It is not due to a lack of intelligence but more of a lack of aptitude due to continued failure. Reluctance to type a thought, phrase or sentence, often results in continued failure and disenfranchisement when working with text across the curriculum. Some users have minimal or poor spelling skills, limited vocabulary, and limited command of a language (e.g. new arrivals and students in ESL) or are print disabled. Dyslexia poses a raft of other problems. Reading and writing text can be perceived as being the enemy and something to avoid at all costs. This can result in limited advancement in school, reduces the likelihood of engagement and causes behaviours that are unacceptable or damaging. Benefits of TTS for Students TTS technology allows users to work the sense of hearing. Each individual has different needs and abilities. Multiple approaches to the creation of text are therefore required. An important adjunct to accessing text is in listening to prose or poetry created by the user or text sourced from other sources. These sources may include: • • • • • • • • • Newspapers, journals and magazines Books, maps and other reference materials (scanned as electronic text) MS Word or word processing documents, recipes, instructions, fact sheets or directions Encyclopaedias and atlases online, or on CD or DVD Emails and online chat FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo and other social networking sites Other web content on any topic or theme Notes or text files In fact, any text that can be selected or highlighted Section 3: Text-to-Speech   17  Text-to-Speech of independence. They can begin to become more self-sufficient. Increased confidence in creating and reading text invites additional exposure and access to text and the enjoyment of various genres. Listening to text can be accomplished on a computer, or using more portable devices such as mobile phones, iPods and other MP3 players. Text can be typed or accessed as: • • • • • • Individuals can listen to their own work so as to proof read and check for errors. Editing using TTS allows users to identify and amend various mistakes. Users can listen to errors and check for: • • • • • • • • • • • Missing words Added words or repeated unnecessary words (e.g. ‘the the’) Misspelt words that don’t “sound right” Overly long sentences Sentences that contain too may conjunctions Short sentences Sentences that do not adequately convey meaning Clumsy or ill constructed thoughts and ideas Documents that require additional formatting (e.g. paragraphs) Words that are voiced in unexpected ways Words that inappropriate or used in an incorrect context • • eBooks (online or downloaded from sites such as Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org ) Online stories, Blogs and Wikis Twitter feeds and other Web 2.0 content RSS feeds PDF and MS Word files downloaded Documents and files in HTML from web sites Recipes and procedures Maps and directions (e.g. Google Earth) Directories and information (e.g. White and Yellow Pages) Many more web resources are also available and all of this is made possible for users of all ages. Elderly citizens who are losing their sight or who find reading a computer screen fatiguing and tiring enjoy reading and listening to the London Times, a race form guide or bowls newsletter. Young children can participate in contests, in accessing and learning new games and navigating through unfamiliar content. A Means of Communication When used for reading third-party text, users may enjoy: • • • • • • Listening to new text with a male or female voice Slowing the voice or speeding it up Listening with highlighted text Listening with a choice of different text and background colour combinations Listening through headphones (for private writing or text that is not for public consumption) Re-reading passages for study purposes Text is used for many purposes. If users find reading boring, tedious, arduous or difficult, then TTS programs provide a degree 18  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit In some instances, TTS can also be used for some people as a means of communication. They may have quite approximated speech or are non-verbal. The computer program can voice their typed text as they create words and sentences “on the fly”. They may be fast proficient typists or they may use word prediction software (e.g. Click ‘n’ Type http://www.lakefolks.org/cnt/ or Co:Writer) to develop text more quickly. Using abbreviation and expansion (e.g. in MS Word) they can type more quickly and conduct a conversation with the computer’s male or female voice as their own. This may prove to be a good short-term strategy or it may work well whilst the individual is using a computer and not a dedicated communication device. It depends on a number of factors and the voice being used would have to be sufficiently clear for others, so that the text could be clearly heard and words distinguished and identified easily. • Voicing Text using Different File Formats • The most commonly accessed file formats include: • • • • • • • Text - Pure text (without graphics or tables etc) that can be opened in Notepad or WordPad or other text editing programs MS Word - Edited in versions of MS Word, MS Works, Open Office Org or other word processing programs PDF This can be a useful format but has some restrictions and impediments in Adobe Reader HTML - Ready to edit in a variety of programs (MS Front Page) and FTP’d to web sites and Intranets Proprietary Formats - As used in editing, document layout and desktop publishing programs or art and design software (e.g. MS Publisher) Daisy Reader - A popular format for reading books Amis Daisy Reader (http://daisy.org/projects/amis/) or Read:Outloud Bookshare Edition www.bookshare.org/readingTools#downloadROLF Victor Reader Soft Bookshare Edition- www.bookshare.org/readingTools#downloadVRSOFT • • Commercial Software with Text-to-Speech – Adults: • • • • • Commercial and Free Software for Text-to-Speech In this genre of software, there is a great deal of choice. Generic programs cater to all age groups and abilities. The following categories include software that will predominantly cater to and accommodate users who have different learning, access or communication needs. Commercial Software with Text-to-Speech – Youth • • • • • • Clicker 5 ANZ - uses onscreen grids and templates with graphics & photos www.cricksoft.com Textease - “click and write” anywhere WP - part of Textease Studio CT www.textease.com IntelliTalk - talking WP - part of the IntelliTools Classroom Suite V4 www.intellitools.com Write:Outloud V3 talking WP - part of the SOLO suite of programs www.donjohntson.com Max’s Toolbox - maxwrite - works with MS Office http://www.maxstoolbox.com/products/ Draftbuilder - predominantly text based organisational and planning with templates for structured writing scaffolding and supports www.donjohntson.com Kidspiration – mind mapping using multiple templates and webs. Ideal for planning and organisation with extensive graphic library, thesaurus and TTS www.inspiration.com Writing with Symbols 2000 V2.6 older program but still used widely in special schools http://www.widgit.com/ Communicate: SymWriter - updated version of WWS with additional features & PCS symbols www.widgit.com Communicate: Webwide- symbol based web browser with speech http://www.widgit.com/products/communicate/index.htm Boardmaker 6 and Boardmaker Plus – a program that has DTP and WP functions with over 9000 PSC symbols http://www.mayer-johnson.com/ • textHELP Read & Write V9; www.texthelp.comn or www.spectronicsinoz.com ClaroRead for PC 2008 http://www.clarosoftware.com or www.spectronicsinoz.com Kurzweil 3000 http://www.kurzweiledu.com Wynn Wizard from Scientific software http://www.freedomscientific.com/LSG/products/WYNN.asp or locally from http://www.quantech.com.au/wynn BrowseAloud – will voice web sites that are BrowseAloud friendly. It works with MS Internet Explorer and FireFox. http://www.browsealoud.com/page.asp?pg_id=80004 WordQ - it has natural sounding text-to-speech, in-context prediction for corrections with usage examples for confusing words and the predictions are based on creative spelling http://www.wordq.com/ These software programs all provide quick and elegant access to print materials together with a number of different learning supports, potentially including spell checking, word prediction, thesaurus and dictionaries, text to speech with human sounding voices, text-to-audio conversion, other visual and auditory features and organisational and planning tools. Section 3: Text-to-Speech   19  Text-to-Speech Freeware- Text to Speech programs and Utilities: • • • • • • • • Natural Reader V7 – is a very useful free program that will use SAPI or SAPI 5 voices. It runs as a floating toolbar as well as full screen. Will voice MS Internet Explorer. www.naturalreaders.com ReadPlease 2003 – It runs in a small window but has multiple language support, SAPI 4 voices and easy to use font resize slidebar. Freeware. www.readplease.com Deskbot - DeskBot is a freeware, multi-featured Clipboard Reader, Text Reader, Time Announcer, Desktop Application featuring Microsoft Agent Animated and a range of talking characters. Freeware http://www.bellcraft.com/deskbot/ Cliptalk - automatically speaks text that is copied to the Windows clipboard (e.g. with Right Click-Copy or Ctrl + C) Freeware http://fullmeasure.co.uk/cliptalk/ TextAloud V2.2 - create MP3 or WMA files for use on portable devices like iPods, Pocket PCs, and CD players Uses AT&T, Acapela and/or RealSpeak voices) Free trial, then Shareware. http://www.nextuptech.com/ WordTalk V4.2 -WordTalk is a free text-to-speech plug-in developed for all versions of Microsoft Word (from Word 97 onwards). It will speak the text of the document and will highlight text it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary to help decide which word spelling is most appropriate. Also converts text to audio in MP3 or WAV formats. Open Source/Freeware http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/ PowerTalk V1.2.1 - PowerTalk is a program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in MS PowerPoint for Windows. It uses SAPI 4 or 5 voices. Freeware. http://fullmeasure.co.uk/powertalk/ DSpeech V1.55 - Allows the user to save the output as a .WAV, .MP3 or OGG file and quickly select different voices, even combine them, or juxtapose them in order to create dialogues between different voices. http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/ 20  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Many other free programs exist. Users have their favourites as it depends on what the user wishes to achieve. Many companies now sell and distribute voice technologies. The trick is to purchase a program that has the voice(s) that are required and use them in other programs as well. The two popular Australia voices are Lee and Karen. These are packed with most textHELP products and Claro Software programs. The SAPI 4 versions of Sam, Mike and Mary are the most likely the voices that will be included in most of the Freeware TTS programs. Portable TTS Solutions Documents DSpeech can also be used as a Portable App. It comes packaged in the AccessApps USB suite. It has many powerful features and can be used in a variety of ways. TopOCR, is another free portable OCR application in AccessApps. It runs from a USB memory stick or thumb drive. Using a camera or mobile phone, users take a photo that has text embedded in the frame. The photo is then sent to a computer (via USB or Bluetooth), then start AccessApps and load TopOCR software. It is then a matter of opening the photo and TopOCR will not only convert the text but also read it out aloud using built in TTS. Note: AccessApps is freely available to download and use: http://www. rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/. Converting Text to Audio File Formats Text can be converted to a sound format such as MP3 using commercial or free programs (e.g. TextAloud, DSpeech). MP3 or Audio format files can be created to playback on a computer, Personal Digital Assistant (e.g. Palm or HP device), MP3 player, mobile phone or other music capable device. Conversion software is required and most of the commercial literacy support tools have this capability built in. In Conclusion Resources: This article is a brief discussion into some of the issues raised with reference to speech feedback using synthesised speech on computers and other related digital devices. Users of all ages and abilities can access and gainfully use this technology. It certainly liberates those people who are print disabled. People with dyslexia may need TTS and other tools in order to read or create text. • • • Speech recognition may also be an issue. The combination of these two technologies can afford great advances in access for some individuals. There are always advantages and disadvantages so some research and trial and error may be required. The quality of voice will need to be considered for some users who are: • Have a short or long term hearing deficit • Blind or vision impaired • Very young and require high quality voices (for voice modelling) • Intellectually impaired and who might struggle with some voices • Hearing impaired (using aids or RF’s) • • • www.gateway2at.eu/ - Guidance for Assistive Technology in Education www.tucows.com – a very useful website for locating Freeware, Shareware and Open Source programs www.oatsoft.org/ - OATSoft is dedicated to improving Assistive Technology and computer accessibility through the power of Open Source development techniques. OATSoft makes the best Open Source Assistive Technology Software (OATS) easy to find. Open Source Software is free and the ‘source code’ that makes the software is freely available. It is developed by international communities operating on-line. Assistive Technology Software allows people with disabilities to overcome some of the disabling effects of society and technology, including computer and web accessibility. www.freewarefiles.com/cat_9_105_Text2Speech.html - a list of free text-to-speech programs www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php - online demonstration of various AT&T voices in English and other languages www.texttospeechblog.com/2008/01/axistive-article-on-talkingbooks.html Useful text-to-speech Blog It is a matter of using one or more programs and experimenting. Individuals of all ages enjoy having text spoken back from emails and web sites as they can listen, read or listen and read at the computer or on a mobile device of their choosing. It promotes increased independence and provides opportunities for taking more risks with text. Reading can be a very negative experience for students. TTS offers a new way to work with data and text. It’s worth a try! Section 3: Text-to-Speech   21  SECTION4 Section 4 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Text-to-Audio & Sound Editing Programs Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 4: Text to audio & sound editing programs  23  Text-to-audio & sound editing programs The ability to read and comprehend is taken for granted yet there are so many who have difficulty. Translating text to audio is meaningful and practical as the user can then decide when and where to use the technology to advantage. In this section Introduction Commonly Used Sound Formats Recording Voice or Sound Effects Commercial Programs that Provide Text-to-Audio Translation Freeware Text-Audio Utilities Assistive Software to Access Electronic Text or Text from Scanned Documents Features in Most Text-to-Audio Programs In Conclusion Introduction Creating sound files from recordings and from electronic or scanned text allows users to listen to information on a computer or on a more portable device. These include MP3 players, such as iPods, MP3 players, mobile phones, Portable Digital Assistants (e.g. Palm, HP iPaqs) and even digital cameras. Listening to audio, or listening whilst reading the same text, can dramatically improve access to text-based data. The quality of the audio is dependent on the program that records it, the environment in which it is captured, the synthesised voice use, the format in which it is stored and the player and speakers used in playback. People of any age or ability who cannot read a language, or comprehend text are at a distinct disadvantage when studying, researching or following directions and instructions. Traditionally educators in schools, higher education and work places have used and distributed published materials or provided books in printed hard copy format. People with poor reading, dyslexia and new arrivals struggling with English (or any other language being used) were disenfranchised and had little or no means to read and decode information. The creation and mechanics in writing or typing text are complex. Reading and accessing text from paper based sources and electronically from computers, portable readers and now mobile phones can present many different problems and difficulties If they are able to listen to words, phrases, sentence paragraphs or whole documents, they can function with a degree of independence. Reading and listening to emails, web chat, web sites, blogs, Wikis, Twitter and RSS feeds and other online content is liberating and opens up a world of opportunities for engagement and access to social groups, news, current affairs as well as leisure options. 24  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Computer applications and utilities provide opportunities to translate text to audio. These programs are either packaged in commercial products, offered as freeware or are utilities that can be accessed in programs such as MS Word (e/g. Wordtalk V4.2) or in a browser (e.g. in Mozilla Firefox using TextAloud). Commonly Used Sound Formats The most common sound file format in use at the moment is the MP3 standard. MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard encoding for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players. MP3 is an audio-specific format that was designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group. The group was formed by several teams of engineers and was approved as an ISO/IEC standard in 1991. The use in MP3 of a lossy compression algorithm is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio for most listeners, but is not considered high fidelity audio by audiophiles. An MP3 file that is created using the mid-range bit rate setting of 128 kbit/s will result in a file that is typically about 1/10th the size of the CD file created from the original audio source. An MP3 file can also be constructed at higher or lower bit rates, with higher or lower resulting quality. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3] A huge range of MP3 capable devices exist with Apple Computer capturing the music market with iTunes software and its product line of portable players, the now ubiquitous iPod MP3 players. Other players exist that offer other functions such as voice or sound recording, radio and video playback. They are usually discreet, small in size and very portable. The first players only offered 128MB of storage. Now they range from 1GB to 80GB of storage. The audio playback quality varies and some have multiple sound format capabilities including: • Windows Media Audio (WMA) Windows Media Audio (WMA) is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its audio file format or its audio codecs. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. • WAV WAV (or WAVE), short for Waveform audio format, is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is an application of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in “chunks”. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio. • Ogg Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open source; lossy audio codec project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and intended to serve as a replacement for MP3. It is most commonly used in conjunction with the Ogg container and is therefore called Ogg Vorbis. Recording Voice or Sound Effects Previously, sound files were stored in the WAV format. It is uncompressed format and takes up more storage space than an MP3 file. The Sound Recorder application (go to Start/ All Programs/ Accessories/ Entertainment) can be used to record sound using an inbuilt or external desktop, headset or handheld microphone. It is a very handy application but has limitations in its ability to record high quality sound or voice production. It is not an editor and has only a few effects (e.g. echo, reverse, or only increase or decrease speed by 100%). Other more comprehensive audio editing programs exist including: • Audacity - is free, open source software for recording & editing sounds http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ • WavePad Sound Editor - is a full featured professional audio editor www.nch.com.au/wavepad/ • Free Audio Editor 2009 - record audio from a microphone or any other input device www.free-audio-editor.com/ • Audio Blast - another free program www.moor-software.com/0.php?lang=English&page=blast.php • Soliton II http://biphome.spray.se/baxtrom/soliton.htm • Reaper - a reasonably priced shareware program www.cockos.com/reaper/ • Cool Edit 2000 www.mp3-converter.com/cool_edit_2000.htm • Acid Pro V7 - a professional audio editor www.sonycreativesoftware.com/acidpro • Sony Sound Forge Audio - another powerful audio editor www.sonycreativesoftware.com/audiostudio You can use Sound Recorder or these other programs to record voice, music or sound effects whilst at the computer. The USB microphones or analogue models that have a USB converter provide the best quality. Some have noise cancelling or peripheral noise reducing functions. Microphones that are unidirectional are usually better than omni-directional. Price usually dictates performance and thus higher sound reproduction. Digital Voice Recorders can be used to record voice files away from the computer. These portable devices vary on price and performance as well as features. Memory storage ranges from 256MG to 4GB and above. Some will allow for different sound format recording and transfer to a PC. These models usually have a USB facility whilst others have Bluetooth connectivity. Models from companies such as Sony, Olympus, Panasonic and Sanyo vary in price. Most devices have microphone input and headphone jacks. Other features include storage ‘folders’, slow or fast playback speeds, counter(s), erase and hold functions. The Hold function stops inadvertent turning on or off. Audio files can also be uploaded to these devices and played back. Some allow for MP3 format whilst others use WAV or WMA. As with all technologies, some research is required before purchase. The user needs to determine and assess specific needs and identify the relevant functions that are critical or necessary before committing to a particular model. Section 4: Text to audio & sound editing programs  25  Text-to-audio & sound editing programs Commercial Programs that Provide Text-to-Audio Translation These programs will convert any text that can be selected or highlighted on screen to one or more audio or sound formats. Keeping in mind that some formats have inbuilt compression, there may be a loss of ‘data’ or audio quality. Choosing different synthesised voices may result in better outcomes. By selecting a male or female voice, increasing or decreasing sound pitch and speed may also provide more desirable results. It depends on the user, the type of data being converted, the intended purpose and audience and ultimately what the final product will be used for in a setting or situation. Private listening is different from broadcasting. Some applications that can be used to convert text to audio include: TextAloud www.nextup.com TextAloud uses voice synthesis to convert text into spoken audio. Students and other users can listen to text on their PCs or create MP3 or WMA files for use on portable devices such as iPods, Pocket PCs, and CD players. • • • • • • Users can directly open Word, PDF, and HTML files. It has automatic iTunes/iPod syncing. It has some advanced pronunciation tools Toolbar plug-ins are included for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and MS Outlook Optional premium voices for a wide variety of accents and languages can be downloaded TextAloud is for Windows and a MAC OS version is available 26  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Power Text to Speech Reader www.1speechsoft.com/?gclid=CMbbtvGQiJkCFSMSagodViRHmg Power Text to Speech Reader is a popular Text-to-Speech tool. It lets the user listen to documents, e-mails or web pages instead of reading on screen. It uses voice synthesis to create spoken audio from text with natural voices and converts text to MP3 format. Natural Reader www.naturalreaders.com/products.htm The Free version no longer converts text to WAV files but the Personal and Professional versions do, at a cost. They also have 2 or more AT&T voices packaged with the commercial versions. The powerful audio output function allows users to convert a large text file containing up to 4 million letters to an audio file. Users can create single large-size audio files (up to 3GB audio files) and can convert a text file into a single audio file containing up to 3GB of information. NaturalReader allows converting text into MP3, WAV and OGG Vorbis audio files. Verbose Text to Speech www.nch.com.au/verbose/index.html?gclid=CO3lnqWViJkCFSMSagodV iRHmg Converts text to voice and can save as MP3. Verbose is a text to speech program that will read aloud any text or save it as MP3 or WAV formats. After users have installed this text reading software they can assign a system-wide hot key. Then whenever they want Verbose to read the text on the screen they just push that key and the software will read it aloud. Freeware Text-Audio Utilities WordTalk V4.2 www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/ This is a very powerful program for people with reading and writing difficulties, as having text reinforced by hearing it read aloud can be very useful. Specialised programs have existed to do this for a long time, and in many cases are extremely helpful and highly appropriate and should be seriously considered, perhaps in consultation with professional advice where necessary. WordTalk is a free text-to-speech plug in developed for use with all versions of Microsoft Word (from Word 97 upwards). It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary to help decide which word spelling is most appropriate. Sitting neatly in the MS Word toolbar it is highly configurable, allowing users to: • Adjust the highlight colours • Change the voice and the speed of the speech • Convert text to speech and save as a .wav or .mp3 file so that it can be played back on an iPod or mp3 player. Spokentext.Net http://spokentext.net/ SpokenText.net is a free text to speech converter. It allows users to record (English, French, Spanish or German) text in PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, RSS feeds, emails and web pages and converts them to speech automatically. AT&T Labs www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php This web site allows a user to type in up to 300 characters. It will then voice this text in a number of different AT&T voices (including Crystal, Rich, Mike, Claire and many others). The user can then download the WAV formatted file. It is particularly useful in creating sound grabs, narrated or voiced text to insert into MS PowerPoint or other multi media programs. ISpeech www.ispeech.org/convert.text.php Convert any text to speech quickly and easily online at this web site. Simply enter text into the field and click “listen” or can cut and paste text into the box or drag and drop text for conversion. iSpeech will quickly convert text into natural sounding spoken audio. After users convert text to speech, they can listen to it with iSpeech’s flash widget, embed it on websites, share it with friends, or download it and put it on users’ iPods. The text to speech conversion can be used as a tool to catch up on useful information, get ahead at work or sit back and relax while users listen to their favourite author. iSpeech text to speech conversion is fast and high quality and always available on the Web. Dspeech http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/ Allows the user to save the output as a .WAV, .MP3 or OGG file and quickly select different voices, even combine them, or juxtapose them in order to create dialogues between different voices. DSpeech integrates a vocal recognition system that, through a simple script language, allows users to create interactive dialogues with the user. Users can also configure the voices in an independent way. Cleverly integrating apposite TAGs, it allows users to dynamically change the features of the voices during the playback (speed, volume and frequency), to insert pauses, emphasize specific words, or even to spell them out. It also has a portable App version that will run from a USB memory thumb drive. This is available from RSC Scotland: www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/ accessapps/. Section 4: Text to audio & sound editing programs  27  Text-to-audio & sound editing programs Assistive Software to Access Electronic Text or Text from Scanned Documents Numerous other programs and web services exist. It is a matter of locating a text-to-speech program, utility or web service that converts text to an audio format of your choosing. The text, once converted from a third party source or from personal writing in MS Word or word processor, email or web site to a suitable sound file, can then be played back: • • • • • • • • • On a computer using speakers, amplification or sound system for private or public performance On a computer for the user to read along with the text on screen At any time to read a paper-based version for editing, fluency, practise or study For memorising content For rehearsing purposes (e.g. in practising the delivery of a speech) Using headphones (for privacy or reflection or for use in public spaces) To read a section, part or whole book To listen to a web site offline To listen to an email offline 28  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit • • • • • To proof read writing To attend to instructions, directions or To follow a list of ingredients or method in a recipe To listen to a ‘talking book” for leisure or fun To listen for meaning, clarity or to assess and appraise Features in Most Text-to-Audio Programs Most programs have a number of voices, both male and female, from which to choose. Users can dictate the speed of delivery and often change pitch and/or tone. Some programs offer ‘word pause’ and even sentence or paragraph pause that will add extra pauses to text, where necessary. Commercial literacy tools such as textHELP Read & Write V9 (www. texthelp.com), ClaroRead 2008 for Windows (www.clarosoftware. com) and Wynn ™ V5.1 ( www.freedomscientific.com/LSG/products/ wynn_new.asp) have text-to-audio facilities within these programs. Extensive features provide for high quality audio files using a range of human-sounding voices. In Conclusion Resources Text-to-Audio technology has matured over the past few years. It is being used in the business, telemarketing, telecommunications and telephony markets. The portability and ease of access is available to people of all abilities. Programs use either SAPI 4 or SAPI 5 voice technologies to speak or voice the text in a document on the computer and then also convert it to an audio file. A useful guide to audio editors with links to some more free programs as well as fact sheets and guides can be located at http://www. thefreecountry.com/utilities/audioeditors.shtml. For information on MP3 conversion programs with links to Commercial, Shareware and Freeware applications link to: http://www.mp3-converter.com/ mp3_converter_freeware.htm. Some excellent presentations (as well as many other papers and resources) can be downloaded from the Call Scotland website at http://www.callscotland.org.uk/Resources/ Presentations/. Audio formats have improved and synthesised voice technologies are now more advanced with human sounding voices available such as Australian voices, Karen and Lee. Portable players can be used to listen to MP3, WMA or WAV files in any location, at any time for any purpose. It is liberating to access information in a format that is socially acceptable. Headphones provide for private listening or in busy, noisy environments. The text can be read on paper or in a book as well. Individuals often fatigue due to poor reading skills, acquired brain injury or vision impairment. The ability to listen has been a huge benefit including people who are blind. All literature becomes universally accessible. A very handy web link is http://www.freedomscientific.com/LSG/ resources/industry_links.asp#elec. Here users can locate a number of other links to web based text, books and free libraries of eBooks. Some eBook sites such as the Gutenberg Project (www.gutenberg.org) offer books that are out of copyright, as MP3 files. This saves time for parents, teachers and aides in having to convert the thousands of free books to audio files as they have already been professionally converted for students. NCH Software has developed a number of professional sound recorder programs for Windows, Mac and Pocket PC. Each sound recording program is specifically designed for particular recording tasks including general audio recording, voice recording, music recording and more. Link to: www.nch.com.au/software/soundrec.html?gclid=CJHqpbqfiJkC FRwDagodhFMnmQ for more information and a list of programs that all work with audio files. Section 4: Text to audio & sound editing programs  29  SECTION5 Section 5 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Onscreen Keyboards Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 5: Onscreen keyboards  31  In this section Onscreen Keyboards Definition and Background Introduction A virtual keyboard is a software and/or hardware component that allows a user to enter characters. A virtual keyboard can usually be operated with multiple input devices, which may include an actual keyboard, a computer mouse, a head mouse, and an eye-mouse. On a desktop PC, one purpose of a virtual keyboard is to provide an alternative mechanism for disabled users that cannot use a physical keyboard. Another major use for an on-screen keyboard is for bi- or multi-lingual users, who continually need to switch between different character sets and/or alphabets. Definition and Background Benefits of Onscreen Keyboard Access Commercial, Interactive Whiteboard and Freeware Solutions In Conclusion Introduction The majority of software has been traditionally designed for people who use a standard keyboard, mouse and screen display. The individual needs good hand control, vision, hand-eye co-ordination, hearing (some programs provide text-to-speech and other auditory feedback) as well as cognitive abilities in order to access most standard and even some special needs software. Although hardware keyboards are available with dual layouts (for example Cyrillic/Latin letters in various national layouts), the on-screen keyboard provides a handy substitute while working at different stations or on laptops, which seldom come with dual layouts. The standard on-screen keyboard utility on most Windows systems allows hot-key switching between layouts from the physical keyboard (typically alt-shift but this is user configurable), simultaneously changing both the hardware and the software keyboard layout. In addition, a symbol in the sys-tray alerts the user to the currently active layout. [Source: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_keyboard ] This can be a critical barrier. Some will need some form of special access to allow them to use some computer software. Some will require adapted mice, trackballs, head pointing systems or mini or enlarged keyboards. There is a range of external keyboards, modified and programmable external keyboards. In this article, the use of onscreen, sticky or virtual keyboards will be discussed. A user may require a keyguard consisting of a metal or plastic plate with punched holes, fitted over the keyboard as it reduces accidental key-presses caused by hand tremor. Some users can rest their hands on the keyguard surface to more accurately locate the keys. Microsoft has some access software built into the computer’s operating system including TTS and an onscreen keyboard. MAC OS and MS Windows computers have programs that allow users to control the mouse pointer with the keys on the numeric keypad at the right hand side of the keyboard. If a user has severe physical disabilities which means that keyboard use is either impossible, very tiring, or very slow, then voice recognition, or an ‘on-screen keyboard’ program which enables the user to select letters and commands using a single switch from a ‘keyboard’ displayed on screen, may be potential alternatives. 32  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Benefits of Onscreen Keyboard Access Some of the features of onscreen keyboards, in isolation or used in tandem, may assist in some users being more independent users of their computers. Users may require an onscreen or virtual keyboard for a number of different reasons or to achieve a range of outcomes. They can cater to users and prove beneficial for: • Short term injuries where typing is difficult or impossible (e.g. due to use of gloves for a burns victim or due to sports related injury) • Longer term injuries (e.g. RSI and other over use syndromes) • For physically challenged users (e.g. spasticity or tremor) • For users with low tone, muscle spasm or permanent injury to hands or fingers • People who fatigue using a keyboard • For very proficient mouse or trackball users • Proficient joy-stick users • For users who use one or more switches • For users who have head pointing technologies or other devices that use eye-gaze or other body part access • People who are tactile defensive and do not like the ‘touch’ of a keyboard • People who have a combination of physical and sight impairment • For users accessing Interactive devices such as LCD, Plasma TVs and whiteboards Touch Screen and Touch Window Users Features that may provide improved or alternate access may include: • Lower case and Upper Case Character display – ability to modify and change at any time • Enlarged keyboard – ability to increase or decrease the physical size and alter the appearance and therefore performance • Different character and language sets – to accommodate LOTE users • Different character layouts (DVORAK) – to accommodate different access and skills • TTS support – to provide speech feedback to characters, whole words or sentences • Word prediction facilities – to speed up text input and assist with spelling • Switch access – for one or many switches • Head Pointer access – for different models and devices for eye gazing or interaction using controlled body movements, usually using cameras and proprietary technologies • Abbreviation and expansion (e.g. in MS Word) so that users they can enter text more quickly or with fewer errors Commercial Software Any touch-screen can be turned into a virtual keyboard with custom designed keyboards or standard layouts. Touch-screens eliminate the need for keyboards, if there is custom made programs, the programmer may have difficulty accessing those programs without a physical keyboard, wasting valuable time. Onscreen keyboards provide the necessary input methodology for them to type and gain access to software that requires keyboard input. Commercial, Interactive Whiteboard and Freeware Solutions SofType V4.2 - from Origin Instruments www.orin.com/access/softype/ SofType can be accessed using a mouse or mouse emulator such as the HeadMouse® Extreme. SofType is compatible with Windows 2000 and XP as it works by generating an image of a keyboard on the computer screen. When a key is selected, the character represented by that key is sent to the active Windows application. Features: Text entry is provided for all standard Windows applications Integrated AutoClick™ and Dragger™ features for performing clicking functions by dwell selection Multiple keyboard layouts Word completion with customizable word list Macro and abbreviation expansion Excellent companion for mouse emulators Section 5: Onscreen keyboards  33  Onscreen Keyboards Keystrokes V4 – MAC OS www.orin.com/access/keystrokes/index.htm (from Origin Instruments) KeyStrokes is a full function advanced virtual on-screen keyboard that allows you to type with a mouse, trackball, head pointer or other mouse emulator to type characters into any standard MAC OS application. • • • • KeyStrokes software provides advanced multilingual word prediction. Thanks to its PolyPredix™ word prediction engine it can perform word completion, next word prediction and even multi-word prediction in any Roman language as well as many other languages. This proprietary prediction engine offers many unique, time and effort saving features allowing significantly easier and faster typing as it can reputedly reduce typing efforts by 50 to 70%. Mount Focus Information Systems www.virtual-keyboard.com (Programmable code to design your own) These commercial keyboard layouts are available for customising to meet very specific needs. They offer a large range or pre-designed virtual keyboards and they can be downloaded and trialled for up to 30 days. RJ Cooper – Onscreen for Windows www.rjcooper.com/onscreen/index.html (Shareware) (MAC and Windows) The major differences between it and other on-screen keyboards include: • OnScreen has WordComplete, which is not the same as word *prediction*. WordComplete just attempts to complete the word you are working on, whereas word prediction attempts to ‘read ahead’ • OnScreen now has built-in row/ column, ‘talking’ scanning (1-2 switches)! • Suited to users who are vision impaired • OnScreen lets you create or add to word lists, from any text source. • Suited to a sighted user can us CrossScanner software for 1-2 switch scanning. • OnScreen allows users to change any and all colours (Mac OS 9 and Windows versions only). • OnScreen auto-arranges windows (Mac OS 9 and Windows versions only). • OnScreen has TTS technology built-in (Mac OS 9 and Windows versions only). • OnScreen has macro capabilities • OnScreen has a large variety of sizes • OnScreen lets you edit the WordComplete lists directly • OnScreen allows users to set almost any language • OnScreen lets you ‘hide’ keys, for ‘early’ learners in the MS Windows version 34  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit OnScreen allows users to launch other programs from within it OnScreen, with one click, moves and auto-arranges between top and bottom of screen OnScreen, when LARGE and too big to fit on-screen, auto-scrolls left/right when you pin the cursor against an edge in the MS Windows version OnScreen works with Vista and earlier operating systems including XP/NT/2000/98/95 TouchStrokes (MAC OS) http://www.assistiveware.com/touchstrokes.php TouchStrokes provides a fully-functional virtual keyboard for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X (including Tiger and Leopard) that works by drawing a keyboard image on the display and allows users to type characters into any normal application using a mouse, touch screen, graphic tablet, trackball, head pointer or other mouse emulator. It works seamlessly with all standard Mac applications (including those running in the Classic mode) allowing users to type virtually anywhere a hardware keyboard can be used. TouchStrokes automatically adjusts to US and international keyboard layouts and has multiple resizable keyboard models. It handles command-key combinations, dead-keys, and modifier key - click combinations. It offers a quick access toolbar and has many customizable settings. TouchStrokes is ideal if individuals work with a touch screen, electronic white board, or set-up a touch screen kiosk. It is also suitable for art and design students or for artists working with large graphic tablets or server managers that want to eliminate the clutter of having multiple physical keyboards on a desk as this provides a workable and space saving solution. People with disabilities can use the KeyStrokes virtual keyboard, which offers special accessibility features. TouchStrokes works with any mouse or mouse emulating device that is compatible with Mac OS X. This includes the Wacom Graphire and Intuos tablets and Cintiq displays. It also includes Mac OS X compatible touch screens such as those from TrollTouch or just about any touch screen using the drivers from Touch-Base. Onscreen (MS Windows) www.imgpresents.com/onscreen/onscreen.htm OnScreen is the latest Assistive Technology version of IMG’s My-T-Soft Keyboards. OnScreen provides On-Screen keyboard emulation that works with any MS Windows program. The Assistive Technology Version provides a wealth of features specifically designed for use by individuals who can not easily use common input devices. OnScreen provides a powerful interface through any pointing device by providing on-screen keyboards, Word Prediction / Word Completion, user programmable macros, and complete control over all computer functions. OnScreen uses a concept found in fighter planes, helicopters, tanks, and automobiles. That concept is called “Heads Up Display” technology and its principal objective is to keep the user’s focus and concentration centred in one place. OnScreen uses that concept to reduce the visual re-focusing and re-positioning, caused by the heads up and down motion of going from screen to keyboard to screen, and the resulting confusion it causes. • • • OnScreen is used by individuals who need an alternative to the physical keyboard, can use a pointing device or switch, and need an on-screen keyboard as their primary text input device For single switch scanning, there is another version, OnScreen with CrossScanner OnScreen US Standard 101 Keyboard Layout with WordComplete / Action Panel Mount Focus Information Systems RJ Cooper – Onscreen for Windows WiViK http://www.wivik.com/ WiViK can help individuals of all ages who are unable to use a physical keyboard, such as those with spinal cord injuries, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), muscular dystrophy, and cerebral palsy. Any pointing device or one through six discrete switches may be used as input. There are many alternative pointing devices and switches available in the assistive technology field that work with WiViK. All on-screen (virtual keyboard) keys work just as they would if the user were typing on a standard computer keyboard. Users just select a key and WiViK sends it to their word processor, e-mail message, web page or other text-based application that may be used. Keyboards can contain any keys, can be moved anywhere on the screen and can be made any size. The latest release, WiViK ver. 3.2, provides all-inclusive access in one package: • point and click/dwell selection of on-screen keyboard (virtual keyboard) keys with any pointing device • unique expanding quadrant selection • configurable switch-based scanning (automatic, inverse/step and directed scanning with 1-6 switches); • a USB switch connection box is available separately • word prediction • abbreviation expansion • speech output • WordQ uses advanced word prediction to suggest appropriate words to make typing with WiViK faster and to help with spelling. As you type, WordQ continuously presents a list of relevant correctly spelled words within the WiViK keyboard. When the desired word is shown, you can choose it with a single keystroke. Speech feedback enables you to more easily choose words and to identify mistakes in all applications. WordQ also acts a text reader to help users proofread and/or read existing or scanned text. TouchStrokes Onscreen WiViK Section 5: Onscreen keyboards  35  Onscreen Keyboards Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) – Virtual Keyboards Windows On-Screen Keyboard part of the Windows operating system (Free) Different virtual, onscreen or sticky keyboards are available from the manufacturers and distributors of the respective IWB companies. Teamboard, Hitachi, Smart Boards and Promethean all provide a functional onscreen keyboard, usually activated from a menu in their software or from a physical button or icon on the board itself. The functionality and features vary. They are not essentially designed to meet or resolve disability issues. Rather, they provide keyboard access to finger pointing and stylus input for users who are engaging with and accessing the surface area of the IWB. Freeware Click ‘n’ Type V3.03 http://www.lakefolks.org/cnt/ Click-N-Type is an on-screen virtual keyboard designed for anyone with a disability that prevents him or her from typing on a physical computer keyboard. As long as the physically challenged person can control a mouse, trackball, touch screen or other pointing device, this software keyboard allows users to send keystrokes to virtually any Windows application that can run within a window. The Click-N-Type Virtual Keyboard is a 32 bit application that requires Windows 95/98/ ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista or later. Users can choose the font and font attributes such as Point Size, Bold and Italic. Note: The two rows of alphabetic keys maximises available vertical screen space while minimizing mouse movement. However, for those students who are accustomed to and proficient with the QWERTY keyboard, they provide a QWERTY layout designed with the CNTDesigner. The Word Prediction window uses 8 point “MS Sans Serif” font by default. If users have low vision, they can select the font, size and style, using the “Prediction - Set Prediction Window Font...” menu command. Since a larger font requires a larger window, users can resize this window, and its size will be remembered each time they run the Click-N-Type Virtual Keyboard. This is a unique and very powerful feature as it provides Word Prediction for trial purposes or for full-time use. 36  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit On-Screen Keyboard is an accessibility utility that displays a virtual keyboard on the computer screen that allows people with mobility impairments to type data by using a pointing device or joystick. Besides providing a minimum level of functionality for some people with mobility impairments, On-Screen Keyboard can also help people who do not know how to type. In order to access this free technology, follow these steps (Note: If the software is not available, request that it be installed or re-instated by the technician). On the Start menu: • Point to All Programs • Point to Accessories • Point to Accessibility • Select On-Screen Keyboard Note: A message box with a link to more information about the On-Screen Keyboard may appear. To close the box, select OK Dasher www.bltt.org/software/dasher/index.htm The Inference Group at Cambridge University originally intended to create a method of entering text into PDAs and other mobile devices. The result, however, provided a vital alternative to standard On-Screen Keyboards that are used by thousands of people with physical disabilities. Most OSKs have a layout very similar to a regular keyboard only displayed on the screen rather than as a physical group of keys. Dasher is radically different and as a consequence can provide typing rates of up to 39 words per minute (although 20-30 wpm is more realistic). Rather than using static keys, Dasher employs a sort of ‘letter stream’ where the alphabet flows towards you and you catch your letters as they pass. Actually you’re really ‘zooming’ in to each letter and revealing more letters underneath that will go to form the next character in the word you are typing. In Conclusion This article is a brief discussion into some of the issues and implications of sourcing appropriate onscreen keyboards. There is a great deal of choice. Each potential solution offers technologies that may cater to generic or specific access, vision, communication, sensory and/or cognitive need. It is a matter of trialling one or more programs and experimenting with the size, location, keyboard layout and other functions of the onscreen keyboard. Each has its own benefits and attributes. Users who are vision impaired will require a keyboard that can be enlarged and also choose a different sized font, or coloured font and background. Some onscreen keyboards have abbreviation and expansion options, Word Prediction panels and multiple language support. Others will always “stay on top” and push to the front of all other windows. If you require test-to-speech, then a keyboard that has speech or works alongside a TTS program that will voice all keystrokes or completed words may need to be experimented with and trialled. As with all technology, the user needs to have time to learn and master the basic functions before longer term viability can be established. If the keyboard is to be used as a form of AAC or communication, then other issues may need to be discussed and more robust software investigated. Other onscreen keyboards and programs that contain “grids”, including Clicker 4 and Clicker 5, Wordbar, The Grid I and 2, CubeWriter , No-Keys and the Fatali Keyboard. Resources: An excellent resource that has comprehensive information on all types of Onscreen Keyboards can be located at: http://callcentre.education. ed.ac.uk/SEN/5-14/Special_Acc_FFA/On-screen_FFB/on-screen_ffb. html. Another very informative resource can be located at http://atrc. utoronto.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Item id=9. This page at the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre discusses the role of onscreen keyboards and lists many of the choices that are available. More information can be found about OSK’s at www.bltt.org/ software/osk.htm or www.bltt.org/quicktips/keyb_osk.htm. Section 5: Onscreen keyboards  37  SECTION6 Section 6 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Word Prediction Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 6: Word Prediction  39  In this section Word Prediction Advantages and Disadvantages Introduction Many people think of WP as the software in their mobile phones that provides predictive text. There are now a number of different technologies, all offering different pathways and solutions. Advantages and Disadvantages How Word Prediction Works Commercial Word Prediction Software Word Predictions and other Auto Completion Freeware Portable Versions on USB Thumb Drives In Conclusion Introduction Word Prediction (WP) software was developed many years ago and meets a number of different text-entry needs. It provides slow or reluctant writers who often misspell words, a means of developing and entering text confidently without spending all their time worrying about which letter comes next, or finding the right keys. Some packages also provide additional cues and supports to help write more fluently. Users can use predicted words as they write, to help them spell more accurately and with fewer errors. Most WP programs allow the user to hear the selected words as they are chosen. In addition, the text can be echoed as text is entered for spell checking and word flow. Other programs help review writing with text colour and highlighting as well as text-to-speech options. Word predication software suggests words for uses to read, listen to and use, with spoken feedback to help them identify and locate mistakes. Word prediction and speech feedback are important functions that bolster strengths to assist writing. The text can be ‘sent’ to programs including Microsoft® Word, Open Office Org applications, MS WordPad, spreadsheets, databases, MS PowerPoint Notepad or Outlook, and when using some Word Prediction products, the text can also be highlighted and read aloud within that application. 40  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit It is in matching a users individual needs with the most relevant and pertinent program, with the set of features that are required, that afford successful implementation and ongoing viability. Research into the options available, trialing the software and carefully deciding upon the most useful technology is the key. Word prediction does not correct grammar, sort out punctuation or provide creative ideas. It supports the user in helping to determine and choose the correct spelling of a word, often with dictionary and/or homophone support. Users of all ages who have problems writing and editing text, particularly those with learning disabilities, often benefit. It has certain clear advantages, yet for others, it can slow typing speed in entering text, as it takes time, patience and practice before it accrues benefits and results. The list of words that appear onscreen distracts some students. It interrupts their thinking and flow. Fast typists often complain that their typing speed is slowed considerably as they have to check the words that are constantly appearing and changing in the word prediction list. Recording their ideas using a Dictaphone can assist in maintaining their fluency. If the text has been spoken into a recording device (e.g. a mobile phone, MP3 player, PocketPC or digital recorder) then the student needs only to replay the voiced recording and enter the text at a speed that accommodates WP software. Slower typists who are disengaged, frustrated by their poor spelling and word usage discover that word prediction, over time, increases productivity and text entry. The words listed in front of them give them confidence. Users can listen to the words so as to identify the one required. With text-to-speech support, words can be voiced before selecting them, as they are selected and as the phrase or sentence is completed in the designated software program (e.g. MS Word). How Word Prediction Works WP software programs basically operate the same way. Once installed and configured, they are either embedded in a software program or function as a fixed or floating toolbar. Once activated, a box appears on screen. It can be customised to be centred, located next to the cursor or appear anywhere lese on the screen (e.g. at top right, bottom left etc.). As the user types a letter, a list of predicted words will appear. The box or window colour can usually be customised with text, foreground, highlight and background colour. Size and font style are also optional. As more letters are entered, the prediction ‘engine’ selects different sets or combinations of words that are most likely. The more letters entered, the shorter the list and the more accurate the potential selection. This is commonly referred to as Word Completion. Using Word Prediction in ‘next word’ mode, some WP programs will promote and enter more than one word. After the user finishes entering a word, the box will display a list of words that normally follows the word just entered, based on his or her own vocabulary. Word completion and word prediction will greatly accelerate “typing” speed with keyboard users as well as switch/scanning input users. The words can appear automatically as well, but this is usually only selected as a useful option after the user has been using the software for a time period. A list of ‘automatically predicted’ words can interrupt a user’s planning and thinking and be quite disconcerting for some users. Suffixes and prefixes can be entered in some programs, as well as shortening a word. WP programs differ in how they treat misspellings. Features can be turned on to only accept and use words that are correctly spelt. Others accept phonetic errors and will still locate words that sound the same (e.g. ‘egs’ for exhaust). Yet others have more intelligence, for example, type “hipp” and the WP types the rest of “hippopotamus” and a space because the word hippopotamus is the only word in the main dictionary that starts with the letters “hipp”. Some programs will automatically add any unrecognised word that a usertypes to his or her user dictionaries. Every program offers sets of features that distinguish and differentiate them from competitor’s products. The user’s vision, cognition, keyboard skills, mouse skills, use of verbal and written language, use of extended vocabulary, ability to learn and master software as well as cope with two concurrent program windows, needs to be thoroughly explored and assessed. Frequency and Recency Word Predication works on two main principles of frequency and recency. Words are predicted on a number of criteria. Firstly, the word needs to be in the dictionary being used. If a word has been used recently, it will appear further up the list. It used frequently it will appear at the top or high in the list. After a time period, the software predicts more and more accurately as it continually monitors the word usage and vocabulary being used by the student. It is therefore important that users log on or sign on as individual users, rather than a ‘shared’ program, so that the accuracy and integrity are not compromised. WP software on student Notebooks works very well as the student is the sole user of the software. Some programs provide multiple user logins, so this can alleviate the problem. Dictionaries Word Prediction applications come with a built-in Main Dictionary. The size of the dictionary in words varies. If a word that is used frequently isn’t included, the user can quickly add it to a custom ‘user dictionary’. A feature commonly added to most WP programs is the automatic function where new words can be added as they are entered. There are also topic dictionaries that can be downloaded from developer’s web sites or created by the education support team. Users can also import lists of words on themes, topics or interest areas. Abbreviation and Expansion In addition to word prediction, most WP programs offer ‘abbreviation expansion’, and sentence completion. This is where a letter combination such as NHHS can be expanded to New Haven High School. Text-to-Speech Support In some WP programs, users can adjust the pitch and speed of a selected speaking voice. The human sounding SAPI 5 voices that are now available in commercial off-the-shelf programs provide clearly articulated speech. The word being highlighted in the word prediction window (by hovering over it with a mouse, left or right clicking on it or by pressing a designated key) can be voiced to check that it is the required word. Words can be scanned up or down the list and voiced. Once the word is ‘sent’, it can be voiced or the sentence completed. There are numerous options and combinations so scrutiny of the software is required before it is purchased. Also, users can correct any words that are not pronounced correctly using Voiced Exceptions or Pronunciation Editors functions. This avoids Section 6: Word Prediction  41  Word Prediction incorrect and annoying repetitive pronunciations especially of place names and proper nouns. Another popular feature in Soothsayer is where users create individualised sound recordings and attach them to an abbreviation. In addition to hearing words and sentences spoken when typing, they can also hear letters and punctuation as they type. Hot Keys Most programs have user definable ‘hot keys’ where certain popular or critical functions are assigned to keyboard combinations (e.g. Alt Shift =). As long as they don’t conflict with the operating system (e.g. MS Windows) or the application they are using (e.g. Open Office Writer) it avoids locating the mouse and then locating and accessing a menu option. It saves time, is usually faster for most users and caters to individuals who are blind or vision impaired. It also caters to those who fatigue using a mouse and keyboard combination and to competent typists. 42  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Commercial Word Prediction Software Co:Writer SOLO www.donjohnston.com or www.spectronicsinoz.com/catalogue/20793 Co:Writer has been a very popular and well-regarded application for many years. It is designed for struggling writers, as translating thoughts into writing can feel overwhelming. Their writing often suffers from phonetic or inventive spelling, lack of richness, limited detail, and incoherence. It can empower those with more written self-expression. Co:Writer SOLO is the only word prediction program to use Linguistic Word Prediction intelligence. For individuals who struggle with translating thoughts into writing, there is reputedly no other tool that interprets what they intend to say. It has been used extensively in Australia for in Primary, Secondary and Tertiary education. There are versions for the Neo and AlphaSmart. Co:Writer SOLO Benefits include: For Users: • Compose grammatically correct sentences containing rich, topic-specific words • Write more and produce longer sentences with fewer spelling errors • Build confidence by actively participating in written expression WordQ 2.4 www.wordq.com/ or www.spectronicsinoz.com/product/22464 Word Q is a simple and easy-to-use tool that helps students write independently and with confidence. WordQ 2 suggests words to use and provides spoken feedback to help find mistakes. It features a carefully thought-out design with only essential functions that have demonstrated benefits to help writing. It was researched and developed at Bloorview MacMillan Children’s Centre, an internationally renowned children’s rehabilitation hospital located in Toronto, Canada along with educators and professionals working with students with learning disabilities. • • • • • WordQ 2 includes features including: A high-quality natural sounding text-to-speech engine by the Acapela Group This is an external link is included so that text is more clearly heard. In-context prediction makes corrections easier by displaying appropriate word predictions wherever the text cursor is placed, even when the cursor is in the middle of a word A temporarily disappearing word prediction box allows you to move through your documents without distraction while holding down any arrow key Usage examples with speech feedback of commonly confused words, such as “there” and “their,” helps to distinguish between homophones Saving user vocabularies and usage examples as an independent file allows easier editing and sharing with other users Soothsayer V4.0 http://www.ahf-net.com/sooth.htm SoothSayer Word Prediction helps to enter text faster and more accurately. It works in conjunction with other programs such as off-the-shelf word processors, web browsers, databases, spread sheets, etc. SoothSayer comes with a built-in Main Dictionary of over 11,000 words, and if a word that is used frequently isn’t included, he or she can quickly add it to a custom User Dictionary or have SoothSayer automatically add it automatically. In addition to word prediction, it offers abbreviation expansion, and sentence completion (text up to 500 characters long). There are several speech options available including automatically speak letters, automatically speak last typed word, automatically speak last typed sentence, speak word prediction word/sentence when it is pointed at with the mouse, speak word prediction word/sentence when it is selected, and speak quickly using the Quick Speech button. For speech augmentation, the built-in SoothSayer Speech Dictionary offers a foundation of over 350 frequent sentences (based on abbreviation expansion) and students and you can add your own favourites. Penfriend Versions - Penfriend XL, XP Portable and FR versions http://www.penfriend.biz/ Penfriend XL is a comprehensive literacy aid which can boost confidence and increase reading and writing skills across the age and ability range for those with dyslexia, physical disabilities including visual impairment, or for anyone learning another language. It provides features including: • Screen reading and text magnification • Word prediction in many languages • On-screen keyboards for many languages • Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) • English as a Second Language (ESL) Penfriend Portable brings the literacy support features of Penfriend XL to users on the move. It is available for use on an unlimited number of computers, one at time, so is ideal for taking between, sites or taking home in the evening. Even better, the USB hand-held Penfriend software requires no installation, and can be used on machines with stricter administrative policies than for other software. Simply double click on the icon, and it works. No installers, no networks, no delays are experienced. Penfriend is also available in several European languages including French, Italian, German and Swedish. Demo versions are available. Highlights in Version 3 include: • • • • • • • • • • • • Still better prediction New 30,000 word lexicon Integrates with Clicker 5.2 software Add images to predictions with Clicker 5 Handles empty lexicons Drag and drop lexicons Learning of new words improved Extended on-screen keyboard Easy to type numbers and URLs Better interactions with other programs Links to free voices Improved preferences Section 6: Word Prediction  43  Word Prediction Gus! Word Predication http://www.gusinc.com/wordprediction.html Kurzweil 3000 www.kurzweiledu.com/ or www.spectronicsinoz.com/catalogue/14408 This WP utility aids those who have limited keyboarding ability such as slow typists, probe or pencil users, or one-finger typists. It can be used with standard application software. Kurzweil 3000 is a scanning, reading, writing and learning solution for those with learning disabilities or reading difficulties Gus! Word Prediction places an “always on top” window on the computer screen. Users can stretch or shrink the window to any size required, and the font size will adjust automatically. As users input each character, Gus! Word Prediction revises the displayed “word list”. When the user sees the desired word, he or she simply left-clicks on the word or presses the corresponding function key (F1 - F9) and Gus! Word Prediction will complete the word. It predicts current and next word based on the users frequency of use. It also includes abbreviation expansion (“gm” = “good morning”). Kurzweil 3000 is a leading reading, writing and learning software for individuals with dyslexia, learning difficulties, or those who are English Language Learners. Educators and independent research have demonstrated that Kurzweil 3000 provides not only the tools needed to improve reading speed and comprehension, but also the features that make it possible to learn and study independently. With the aid of visual and auditory feedback, the software helps keep up with assigned reading, writing and other projects. Word Predictions and other Auto Completion Freeware IntelliEdit V1.0 http://intelliedit.en.softonic.com/ It is a useful free program with some great features. IntelliEdit is a Rich Text Editor powered by smart auto-completion. It can auto-complete words and phrases and auto-expand shorthands. It can learn new words and phrase while typing. IntelliEdit can tremendously boost typing speed. IntelliEdit is based on a tab-page MDI interface. Users can create, edit and print multiple RTF documents conveniently in IntelliEdit. IntelliEdit is slim in size and quick to load. Open Office Org 3.0 http://openoffice.org-2009.com/ Open Office Org 3.0, specifically Writer in the language options, has a word prediction feature. Writer has built word completion capability into this word processing program. It is refreshable, meaning that users have to load pre-existing documents first and then close them, which puts all the words into memory so that Writer can predict them in a new document. Its threshold is 10,000 words and the minimum for how long a word has to be for Writer to predict it, is five letters. Writer offers a choice after typing the third letter. Its choices are single and alphabetical, so that if users have words alphabetically close together they continue typing until he or she reaches the one required, then presses enter. The program also automatically inserts a space after the word if this option is selected. 44  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit PhraseExpress www.phraseexpress.com/ PhraseExpress eliminates repetitive typing and manages frequently used text snippets for quick access. The text prediction feature watches out for repetitive text patterns and offers to auto-complete such common phrases. PhraseExpress extends the MS Office autotext feature to any program and can expand text abbreviations and correct typos in any application, not just in MS Word. The Clipboard Manager provides access to previous Windows clipboard items. Portable Versions on USB Thumb Drives People often require solutions at home, work or at friend’s or relatives house. If they can carry a portable solution and use it universally in any domain, it means they are independent and non reliant on network technician’s and managers. The software is carried and accessed via a USB thumb drive so no installation of software on host computers is required. Their specific configuration and software functions are stored in one place. Access is immediate and fuss free. Programs that provide portable versions on USB thumb drives include: Penfriend Portable www.penfriend.biz/products/pf-usb.shtml Penfriend Portable includes all of the familiar features of Penfriend XP and Penfriend XL, such as: • Predictive Text entry • Speech feedback • Abbreviation expansion • Learning new words • Multiple user profiles • On-screen keyboard TextHELP Read and Write V9 www.texthelp.com/ or www.spectronicsinoz.com/product/readwrite-9gold-mobile The Word Prediction feature develops writing skills by providing the tools to construct sentences with ease. As the user types text, a list of suggestions appears in the Prediction Panel. Subject specific or industry related vocabulary could be added to the prediction database to enhance the user experience. The Read&Write 9 GOLD Word Predictor learns the user’s style of writing and predicts the word they want to use next. The prediction database has been enhanced with many more new words and improvements have been made to the speed of processing and suggestion accuracy. Read&Write 9 GOLD continues to allow users to select from context-specific prediction files such as Arts, Beliefs and Books. This further enhances the relevance of the suggestions made. Users can also edit the contents of their custom dictionary and can edit the prediction suggestions to better suit their requirements. Indicators beside each word show context accuracy. This means users will be less likely to make a grammatical error, thereby increasing the quality of their work. ClaroRead for Windows 2008 www.clarosoftware.com ClaroRead contains a word prediction feature, which can be useful for certain computer users. ClaroRead uses a base prediction dictionary consisting of the most frequently used words in the English language. The dictionary learns as users type, and rejects words that don’t pass the automatic spellcheck. The Prediction List will automatically appear by the cursor during typing. Alternatively, users can dock the Prediction windows anywhere on the screen to use it as a reference. Section 6: Word Prediction  45  Word Prediction The ClaroRead Advanced Settings Editor now allows the creation of multiple Prediction Dictionaries, by importing words from existing documents. Ideal for creating subject specific dictionaries, it puts the tool into the hands of the user. Kurweil 3000V11 for Windows – Portable www.kurzweiledu.com/kurz3000USB.aspx • Increased 4GB capacity swivel drive • New RealSpeak Spanish voices • Upgraded FineReader and ScanSoft OCR (Professional) • Inclusion of Virtual Printer (Professional) • Version 11 Writing Path enhancements found in Windows V11 software In Conclusion Word prediction programs vary quite dramatically in how they appear on screen, function and work with other applications. Some are stand alone (Co:Writer, SoothSayer, Penfriend, Gus! and Predictability), others included in literacy support tools (Read & Write, Wynn, Kurzweil 3000, ClaroRead) where others work within an environment (IntelliTools Classroom Suite). The features and functions have been designed to accommodate different audiences. Packages that offer support to adults may not suit younger children. Switch and head point users may wish to use programs that contain features that assist users with physical needs. Yet other programs provide better support for students with dyslexia or vision needs. There is choice. Therefore, the programs need to be trialled either on loan or as a demo for quite a lengthy time period before one is discounted or chosen. Once a user relies on a technology and builds competence, timing, understandings and a repertoire of skills, it is difficult to quickly or easily change and adapt to another program. Some programs will provide additional resources online or on a demonstration CD. 46  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Resources include: • Fact Sheets • Testimonials • Research papers and articles • Online demonstrations (e.g. www.donjohnston.com/media/flash/ product_demo/cowriter/index.html) • Online training videos (e.g. www.kurzweiledu.com/howtov11.aspx) Resources: The AltFormat web site is an independent portal focusing on how developments in the production of alternative format materials are transforming the education of visually impaired and dyslexic students of all ages. Link to www.altformat.org/ for a wealth of information. It provides up-to-date information on alternate formats to text, software, research and practical ideas and strategies for educators and students. It is an excellent resource for parents of students who have dyslexia and learning disabilities. Other older but still useful articles discussing Word Prediction software come from the NCIP library located at http:// www2.edc.org/NCIP/LIBRARY/wp/Profile.htm and the Trace Centre at http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/wordprediction2001/ The perspective from 1994-95 to the present day in 2009, is really interesting. A very handy and useful Word Predication comparison chart can be viewed online or downloaded from Spectronics web site http://www. spectronicsinoz.com/article/22248. It compares nine (9) different programs in a matrix format, listing and highlighting key features and functions. SECTION7 Section 7 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Spell Checker & Thesaurus / Dictionary Supports Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 7: Spell Checker & Thesaurus/Dictionary Supports  47  In this section Spell Checker & Thesaurus/ Dictionary Supports Spelling Errors Introduction Spelling Errors Thesaurus and Dictionaries Advantages and Disadvantages Commercial Thesaurus and Spelling checking Software People make errors in a number of ways. Most spell checkers work on similar principles. The more ‘intelligent’ ones track user errors and keep a log. These are more reliable and cater to users who have poor spelling skills. Common errors include: Freeware and Open Source Solutions Portable Versions on USB Thumb Drives Learning to Spell and Master Phonics Introduction People use computers for a number of different writing tasks, errors are the obvious mistakes users make whilst entering text due to speed, poor typing skills or missed keystrokes. Over and above typing errors, users of all ages misspell infrequently or inconsistently. This article is not primarily concerned with the teaching of spelling or mastery, but the technology and software supports that exist to help users identify and correct misspelling in their work. [Note: A list of popular spelling and phonics programs is listed towards the end of this article for teachers and parents]. 48  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Spelling Utilities and programs • Assist those who spell poorly • Assist those with dyslexia • Gives additional supports to all students who need to check the spelling as they type or after completion of text entry as completed sentences or paragraphs • Provides greater independence • Assists in improved independent proof reading Missed letters Additional letters Double vowels Double consonants Anagrams Reversed order of letters Phonetic errors Spelling programs assist users in identifying errors and usually alert them to the mistake. In MS Word, an incorrect spelling will have a red underline underneath the word. A user can right-mouse-click on the word and a pop-up menu will list possible interventions. If the person incorrectly typed the word ‘Mke’ for word ‘make’, then a list of corrections will promote words such as “Mike”, “Me”, Moke” and “Moe”. The user may elect to ignore these words or Add this new word to his or her dictionary. The person can nominate to have the word automatically corrected as well. By clicking on the Spelling option, a new window will appear. This is where the user can change the dictionary, or change the word once or many times from ‘Mke” to “Make” or even cancel this operation. The Microsoft spelling engine will work across all of the MS Office programs (e.g. Excel, PowerPoint, Access etc). It is when users open other programs that are not in this group or ‘family’ where the need arises for a global spell check. Programs such as textHELP Read & Write V9 or ClaroRead 2008, if used consistently and launched before working on an email, web site, art and design program or other non-Office program, maintain a user’s spelling history. The one spell check can therefore track usage and report when and how one misspells. Therapists can use these features as a diagnostic tool, to a degree, as both programs monitor word usage and report the type of spelling errors experienced over a time frame. They can list or print the type of errors and then concentrate on attending to the misspelt words and identify them for future reference. Some words are used incorrectly, but are spelled correctly. Homophones or ‘confusables’ are commonly used words that do not appear in a spell checker, as they are not misspelt. The context is the error. Therefore, a homophone checker in the above tools and in other literacy support programs is essential for some. There are over 18,500 words in English that can be classified and included as homophones. Free utilities such as tinySpell V1.5 can be very useful. It caters for those students who need a global spell checker. Occasionally users need to check the spelling of words in an application that does not include a spelling checker and they don’t want to launch a word processor. TinySpell is a small utility that allows users to easily and quickly check the spelling of words in any Windows application. tinySpell can watch typing on the fly and alert the user whenever it detects a misspelled word. It can also check the spelling of text that is copied to the clipboard. tinySpell installs itself in the system tray for easy access. It comes with an American-English dictionary containing more than 110,000 words. Optionally, users can download and install other dictionaries, including a British dictionary and install it. While users are typing, tinySpell watches the text that is entered. A practical, but sometimes annoying feature is whenever it detects a misspelled word it beeps and the tinySpell icon in the system tray turns from white. It does alert the user to errors such as typing mistakes and gives an indication to fast typists that they have made one or many errors in a passage of text. When a user copies text to the clipboard, tinySpell immediately checks the spelling. If it finds at least one misspelled word in the text it beeps and turns its icon to yellow. If the icon is white it means that no misspelled words were found in the clipboard text. It is a handy free utility that is discrete and works as text is entered or copied to or from any program. Other programs work very efficiently as imbedded programs. WordTalk has just been re-released as version 4.2. It resides in MS Word as a toolbar. Not only does it perform a spell check, but it also has text-to-speech facilities. Thesaurus and Dictionaries • • • • • An electronic thesaurus assist students with definitions and meanings It is available immediately as am installed program on the computer or accessed as a web resource Words can be researched quickly and independently Words can be cut and paste into the user’s document Searching for synonyms or antonyms can access difficult words more efficiently A number of programs exist for use of electronic thesaurus and dictionaries. Some are installed applications whilst others are web-based resources. A web site such as www.thesaurus.com also links to http://dictionary.reference.com/. Web browsers typically provide a space to place bookmarks on a user’s toolbar, making it a convenient bookshelf for favourite reference tools. Users can drag the links on this site onto the Firefox toolbar for instant access to Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com. (http://thesaurus.reference.com/ tools/bookmarklets.html) Their feature-rich buttons let users • Highlight a word and click on it • Click on the button and type in a word. • Note: The user’s browser may not support these buttons. Other thesaurus programs that require installation include The Thinking Man’s Thesaurus, Wordweb V5, and The Sage. The Thinking Man’s Thesaurus http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/ This is another thesaurus and it works well with Wordweb. It also caters to users who require a thesaurus. This program is an ideal pop-up utility for when the right word is eluding a student. It includes a powerful thesaurus and a dictionary that can check the spelling of individual words as well as provide users with a list of similarly spelt words. The package includes a version of the program that automatically links to the popular freeware dictionary, Wordweb, for looking-up definitions of words. Wordweb V5 http://wordweb.info/free/ Wordweb is a very useful thesaurus. WordWeb is a quick and powerful international English thesaurus and dictionary for MS Windows. It Section 7: Spell Checker & Thesaurus/Dictionary Supports  49  Spell Checker & Thesaurus/ Dictionary Supports can be used to look up words from almost any program, showing definitions, synonyms and related words. It includes pronunciations and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links. Some of the most interesting characteristics of The Sage include: It suits anyone who requires a thesaurus. Version 5 has fast one-click look up, web-reference tabs, bookmarks, as well as support for MS Windows Vista versions. It works with any software and loads and function into the taskbar. It provides fast and efficient access to definitions. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the WikiPedia encyclopaedia. Features of the free version include: • Definitions and synonyms • Proper nouns • Related words • Pronunciations • 150 000 root words • 120 000 synonym sets • Look up words in almost any program • The software has a full dictionary and thesaurus for American, British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, and global English. TheSage http://www.sequencepublishing.com/thesage.html TheSage allows you to look up words directly from most applications, offering multiple detailed definitions each coupled with its own thesaurus. TheSage’s English Dictionary and Thesaurus is a professional software package that integrates a complete dictionary and multifaceted thesaurus of the English language into a single and powerful language reference system. It can look up words directly from almost any program (i.e. MS Word, Firefox, MS Outlook, Thunderbird) and is 100% portable. It is included on the popular free AccessApps suite - http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/. 50  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Comprehensive Dictionary - Multiple detailed definitions (+210,000) Complete Thesaurus - Nearly 1,400,000 relationships between definitions (synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, metonyms, and holonyms) Example Sentences - A large collection that already includes approximately 50,000 examples of usage. Pronunciations - Over 70,000 phonetic transcriptions System Integration - Look up words directly from most applications. Information Integration - Each definition has its own specific thesaurus. Cross-Referencing - Any and all displayed words are click-able, triggering a new lookup. Wildcard Search - Match single/ multiple characters as well as filter by single/groups of vowels and consonants. Anagram Search - Only valid English words are returned. Clipboard Support - Copy search results, examples, thesaurus, definitions. Tabbed Interface - Previous lookups and searches remain readily available. Structured Display - Clean, flexible, fast, and easy to use presentation of information. Custom Appearance - Choose your own font and colour for each aspect of the display. Multi-Session History - Quickly available via dropdown or the ‘History’ tool. Portability - Fully functional when run from portable devices such as a USB Advantages and Disadvantages Parents often lament that spell checkers make their sons and daughters lazy. The standard of spelling skills seems to have waned over the years. The emphasis on being able to spell accurately has witnessed different approaches to literacy lessons and classroom instruction. The facility for helping struggling students complete their own work with some degree of independence and confidence is a key element in keeping them engaged. Creating text is very difficult for many. Having a spell check and thesaurus provides a level of achievement where their work is not graded poorly due to spelling errors or minimal use of vocabulary. Many users with dyslexia speak well and have an extended spoken vocabulary. They tend to type smaller less complicated words as they can spell them. They tend not to use the more exact or sophisticated language, as they are less confident of typing these more difficult words correctly. Commercial Thesaurus and Spelling checking Software textHELP Read & Write V9 www.texthelp.com or www.spexctronicsinoz.com www.spectronicsinoz.com/product/readwrite-9-gold-mobile for a portable USB version The Spell Checker has been enhanced in Version 9. It will convert more errors than previously and the corrections are made on a user’s own spelling patterns and usage. It tracks errors and maintains a log file. The dictionary definitions of the suggested corrections can also be voiced. It also has homophone support. Users can quickly identify and change the words that are used in the wrong context (e.g. to, too and two). They can also be verified by having the definitions read aloud in a human quality sounding voice. ClaroRead for Windows 2008 www.clarosoftware.com or www.spectronicsinoz ClaroRead provides a single Check Button for use in Microsoft Word that combines a homophone dictionary, thesaurus, reference dictionary and spellchecker, making the checking of text and documents easier and more comprehensive. Check individual words or the whole document at any point. The Check Boxes are fully speech enabled, so hovering the mouse over the words will make them speak. There are also over 1000 picture icons to help with word meanings. In addition, the ClaroRead homophone feature will: • Mark in colour all the homophones and confusable words in a document • Using the Advanced Settings Editor, users can also add additional tricky and confusable words • The Check Feature will list alternative words that sound the same, along with the meaning of each word • It will also mark homophones in colour as a user types Kurzweil 3000 www.kurzweiledu.com/ or www.spectronicsinoz.com/catalogue/14408 Kurzweil 3000 is a reading, writing and learning solution for people with learning disabilities or reading difficulties. Kurzweil 3000 is a leading reading, writing and learning software for individuals with dyslexia, learning difficulties, or those who are English Language Learners. Freeware and Open Source Solutions Open Office Org 3.0 http://openoffice.org-2009.com/ Open Office Org 3.0, specifically Writer in the language options, has a spell checker. It also works across all of the other applications in Open Office Org suite. Global SpellChecker http://www.shaplus.com/spell-checker/gsfeatures.htm • Check the spelling and meaning of words from any application using Microsoft Word • Spelling suggestions and meanings are displayed in a non-intrusive way so that you do not have to shift from the application you are working • When spelling suggestions are displayed, copy any suggestion to clipboard by pressing the corresponding number • Display time of spelling suggestions and meanings configurable • Unlike other programs in this category, Global Spell Checker is loaded to memory only when required and exits after spell check is over If a word is a homophone the Homophone Check Box will appear, along with meanings. If the word has alternative words with the same or similar meaning, the Meaning Check Box will appear. Users can then scroll down further to see the dictionary definition. Users can Spell Section 7: Spell Checker & Thesaurus/Dictionary Supports  51  Spell Checker & Thesaurus/ Dictionary Supports TinySpell V1.8 - (tinySpell + is also available at cost) http://www.tinyspell.m6.net/ • • • • • • • • • • • • Checks spelling in any Windows application Checks spelling on-the-fly (alerts if the last typed word was misspelled) Allows you to specify applications for which tinySpell is disabled or enabled Optionally beeps on error (beep sound can be easily set to any wav file) Optionally displays a spelling tip Provides easy access to on-line web services Opens replacements list with a simple mouse click or a hot-key Optionally copies the selected replacement word to the clipboard Optionally inserts the selected replacement word into the document Allows you to add words to the dictionary Easy enable/disable function Uses minimal system resources WordTalk V4.2 http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/ For people with reading and writing difficulties, having text reinforced by hearing it read aloud can be useful. Specialised programs have existed to do this for a long time, and in many cases are very helpful and highly appropriate and should be seriously considered, perhaps in consultation with professional advice where necessary. WordTalk is a free text-to-speech plugin developed for use with all versions of Microsoft Word (from Word 97 upwards). It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary to help decide which word spelling is most appropriate. Wordtalk resides neatly in the MS Word toolbar and is highly configurable, allowing users to: • Adjust the text highlight colours • Change the voice and the speed of the speech • Convert text to speech and save as a .wav or .mp3 file so that it can be played back on an iPod or mp3 player • Check spelling Some useful documentation providing more help and details is available at http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/Documentation/. Portable Versions on USB Thumb Drives TextHELP Read & Write, ClaroRead 2008 and other literacy support tools are now available as portable applications that will fully operate on USB drives. A suite of free solutions is available, called AccessApps. They can be downloaded as a ‘Lite’ or ‘Full” version. Other portable applications can be added as well. AccessApps http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/index.php AccessApps will run without needing to install anything on a computer and provide a range of e-learning solutions to support writing, reading and planning as well as visual and mobility difficulties. Applications that assist in spelling and word definition include Open Office Org, TheSage, PowerReader (a very useful tool for dyslexics) and Dspeech, amongst many other assistive tools. The Merriam-Webster USB Dictionary & Thesaurus portable storage device assists in spelling correctly as well as providing support in defining words, downloading eBooks and eNews and storing files all in one device. Link to: http://www.franklin.com/estore/dictionary/ MWD-170/ for more details. This USB Dictionary and Thesaurus offers the convenience of electronic file storage and instant access to 300,000 definitions and 500,000 synonyms & antonyms from Merriam-Webster® Dictionary & Franklin Thesaurus. Franklins has a wide range of hand held models that can also be useful. 52  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit These portable devices provide support at any location, at any time. For example, the Merriam-Webster Intermediate Dictionary and Spell Corrector provides a portable hand-held English reference tool for reading, writing and spelling It features: • Merriam-Webster’s Intermediate Dictionary with a thesaurus of 500,000 synonyms and antonyms • Phonetic spell correction – type in “nolij” and see “knowledge” • Confusables function distinguishes commonly confused words (their or there versus they’re) • Classmates feature provides words in similar categories (i.e. tiger, cheetah, jaguar, leopard, lion, etc.) • Crossword puzzle solver • Nine games and four learning exercises • Local/world clock • Calculator & currency/metric converters • Up to 4 line LCD display with adjustable font size • • • • • • Freeware • • Learning to Spell and Master Phonics • Some of the following programs may prove to be applicable to younger people who wish to master spelling. Some are game based, whilst others provide drills and practise. There have been many different approaches to the acquisition and mastery of spelling skills. These programs all have some benefit. • • • • • • • • • • Spelling Made Simple www.spellingmadesimple.com/ AussieSpell www.englishsoftware.com.au/adult%20literacy/aussiespell.htm Word Wizard www.englishsoftware.com.au/spelling%20grammar/wordwiz.htm Personal Best Spelling http://www.spellingzone.com/ ISpellWell - 60-day free trial available www.ispellwell.com/ Spell Quizzer - download a free trial www.spellquizzer.com/ • • Spell the Fruit - basic skill acquisition http://webpages.charter.net/hope4all/fruit/download.htm Spell the Vegetables http://webpages.charter.net/hope4all/vegetables/veggiedownload. htm Sebran’s ABC - for very young children www.senteacher.org/FileDetails/18/Children.xhtml Online Spelling Program - online games and drills www.spellingcity.com/ AlphaBeez V1.2 www.softplatz.com/Soft/Education/Languages/AlphaBeez.html WhiteSmoke 2009 - support for adult users www.englishsoftware.org/about.html WordShark V4 - a highly recommended word knowledge program www.spectronicsinoz.com The First 200 Words - for school and home versions http://www.spellingcentre.com/orders/school.htm SuperSpell Series- A Day at the Beach and others www.edsoft.com.au Clicker Phonics - from Crick Software, makers of Clicker 5 www.edsoft.com.au Phonics Alive - Phonics Alive 1, The Sound Blender and The Speller www.edsoft.com.au Ultimate Spelling- eReflect Software, based in the ACT www.ultimatespelling.com/about2.html Easy2Learn Spelling - SoftwareTime www.softwaretime.com.au/product/search/adv_srch_content. shtml Spelling Fusion - SoftwareTime www.softwaretime.com.au/product/search/adv_srch_content. shtml Spelling Show - SoftwareTime www.softwaretime.com.au/product/search/adv_srch_content. shtml Section 7: Spell Checker & Thesaurus/Dictionary Supports  53  Spell Checker & Thesaurus/ Dictionary Supports 54  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit SECTION8 Section 8 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Mind Mapping and Flow Charting Software Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 8: Mind mapping and flow charting software  55  In this section Mind Mapping & Flow Charting Software Introduction Introduction Background and Definition of a Mindmap Implications for Users who Struggle When Creating Text Benefits of Mind Mapping and Flow Charting Software Commercial and Free Mind Mapping Software Portable Solutions Programs differ in how they present the information. The graphical nature and representation appeals to some as they can see part or the whole project, essay, assignment or research model that they are constructing, dissecting, studying, critiquing or analysing. In Conclusion Mind mapping (or creating a brainstorming diagram) involves writing down a central idea and generating new and related ideas which radiate out from the centre. By focusing on key ideas written down in your own words, and then looking for branches out and connections between the ideas, he or she is mapping knowledge in a manner which will help in better understanding and remembering new information. Icons and graphics can be used in some software programs, with linking arrows and tools to clearly show connections and relationships. Use of colour, text-to-speech, hyper linking, spell checkers and word guides also assist in the creation of maps and webs. 56  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Some software companies predominantly offer tools that are involved with use of specific symbols, shapes and colours. Others provide clip art, graphics, photos and picture-based symbol palettes. Kidspiration V3 provides tools for younger children where its sibling package, Inspiration V8 extends the level of complexity and skills required, along with an expanded set of tools and more adult looking interface. Free programs such as Edraw Min Map, Vym and XMind offer a chance to experiment with this genre of software, with portable apps such as XMind and Freemind (the latter two available on the AccessApps suite of programs that operate and launch from a USB drive). mind maps encourage a brainstorming approach to planning and organizational tasks. Though the branches of a mindmap represent hierarchical tree structures, their radial arrangement disrupts the prioritising of concepts typically associated with hierarchies presented with more linear visual cues. This orientation towards brainstorming encourages users to enumerate and connect concepts without a tendency to begin within a particular conceptual framework. The mind map can be contrasted with the similar idea of concept mapping. The former is based on radial hierarchies and tree structures denoting relationships with a central governing concept, whereas concept maps are based on connections between concepts in more diverse patterns. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Map] Background and Definition of a Mindmap Implications for Users who Struggle When Creating Text Students in particular have been encouraged to write essays and assignments in MS Word or other word processing programs such as MS Works, AppleWorks or ClarisWorks. It is a linear approach to note taking. Information can be arranged using numbering and bullets, with use of headings and sub headings and embedded text. Illustrations can be inserted in the form of digital media including photographs, clip art, maps and drawings. ‘Mind mapping software is used to create diagrams of relationships between ideas or other pieces of information. It has been suggested that the mind mapping technique can improve learning/ study efficiency up to 15% over conventional note taking. Some mind mapping software is 3D, though full 3D functionality is difficult to achieve with the forms of interface devices readily available to users. Some mapping programs incorporate other learning optimisation techniques including electronic flashcard style testing.’ [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mind_mapping_software] ‘A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing. The elements of a given mind map are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts, and are classified into groupings, branches, or areas, with the goal of representing semantic or other connections between portions of information. Mind maps may also aid recall of existing memories. By presenting ideas in a radial, graphical, non-linear manner, The information is difficult to organise or reorganise for some with skills if cutting and pasting is required. The automatic and ‘intuitive’ bullet creation and numbering conventions can be frustrating and confusing in MS Word at times! Younger users thrive on programs such as TextEase CT Essentials [http://www.edsoft.com.au/shop/p14870/Textease-CTEssentials-Single-User/product_info.html] as they can place their cursor anywhere and type. They can also drag onto their page a photo, video or sound file and rearrange them merely by clicking and dragging. It is a more natural and intuitive process. Benefits of Mind Mapping and Flow Charting Software The mind mapping, flow-charting and brainstorming programs that are available for free or at a cost provide a more visual and graphical interface. By simply clicking on the screen display, students can type text into a designated box or symbol. Dragging these ideas about, linking and unlinking them, deleting, moving, duplicating and rearranging them is more akin to working on a whiteboard with a Texta and eraser. Their ideas, thoughts, opinions, suggestions and content is readily editable, albeit electronically. With the use of external drawing tablets (e.g. wireless Wacom Cintiq, Bamboo or Graphire models) and Interactive Whiteboards, these programs become even more powerful and inviting to users of all ages. Content can delivered content in more dynamic ways and provide Section 8: Mind mapping and flow charting software  57  Mind Mapping & Flow Charting Software greater interaction between the content and users. The capacity to link ideas to other pages as well as web pages and external programs provides for real time interaction with live data from spreadsheets and web sites (e.g. news broadcasts, sport, share prices or other volatile data). Users enjoy being able to associate data types and like-thoughts to each other. Discussion and debate can take place with information being transformed immediately before their eyes using a variety or pre-formatted icons, symbols and coloured shapes. This data can then be saved as a map or web or converted to text for further editing in other online or offline word processing tools. This genre has a place with the new display media of LCD and plasma screens and monitors that provide large, clear displays. Use of data projectors onto walls, screens and particularly interactive devices provides for small group to 500-member audience presentations. Manipulating information is so much faster and more intuitive using mind mapping software. It is dynamic and can be fun for everyone involved. 58  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Commercial and Free Mind Mapping Software Commercial Software for Young Users: Draftbuilder www.donjohntson.com or www.spectronicsinoz.com predominantly text based organisational and planning with templates for structured writing scaffolding and supports, TTS and use of colour Kidspiration V3 www.inspiration.com or www.edsoft.com.au mind mapping using multiple templates and webs. Ideal for planning and organisation with extensive graphic library, thesaurus and TTS, caters to children Prep-Year 3 and those with special learning needs (30 day free trial is available) Kidspark http://www.spark-space.com/edkidspark.shtml www.spectronicsinoz.com Kidspark is a simplified version of the program for children up to the age of 10 Commercial Software for Adults: Inspiration V8 www.inspiration.com or www.edsoft.com.au (30 day free trial available) It is a very powerful yet easy-to-use tool to visualize, think, organize and learn and has been widely used throughout the various states and territories in Australia for many years. Inspiration is a very well regarded visual thinking and learning tool. With the integrated Diagram and Outline Views, users create graphic organizers and expand topics into writing. This powerful combination encourages learning in multiple modes. As a result, most students gain and retain a better understanding of concepts and demonstrate knowledge, often improving their performance across the curriculum. Students use Inspiration to: • Plan and organize • Research and evaluate • Comprehend and communicate New features in Version 8 included improved text-to-speech, a word guide, more powerful and intuitive symbol finder as well as improved export facilities to MS Word and MS PowerPoint. Some templates are freely downloadable. From http://www.inspiredlearningcommunity.com/ node/730. Spark Space Education http://www.spark-space.com/education.htm or www.spectronicsinoz.com This set of programs was specifically designed to support people with dyslexia. It has a number of unique features. Spark Educator captures all learning styles and accelerates learning by presenting a lesson in conceptual and sequential format. Spark-Space’s unique 3D view allows users to prioritise and maintain concentration. Spark Educator has been designed for simple, uncomplicated use, with built in templates and animated tutorials to allow mastery in minutes. It harnesses the potential of all learners and accelerates learning. Spark Learner helps to understand concepts, organise ideas and produce a finished, structured document. Spark-Space allows the user to learn independently or self-check work through its built in text-to-speech feature. Spark Learner is also an extremely useful tool for those with hidden disabilities such as dyslexia, often improving the learning process. Spark Student has all the features of Spark Learner but also adds Idea and Link Styles, making dealing with large mind maps easier. Spark-Space is available in Languages English (US), English (British), French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux/x86. Rationale V2.05 http://rationale.austhink.com/ or www.edsoft.com.au Rationale is an effective software tool for building critical thinking skills. Based on locally published research at The University of Melbourne, Rationale uses argument mapping to help organise, structure and evaluate reasoning, and communicate it with structure and clarity. In addition, it assists by providing built-in guidance, critical thinking exercises and essay templates to make learning tasks easier, more engaging and enjoyable. Rationale helps accelerate the development of rigorous critical thinking skills by providing a visual framework to organise information, structure reasoning and evaluate evidence. Spark Educator is a teaching tool that works with a whiteboard allowing all learning styles and ability levels to learn. Section 8: Mind mapping and flow charting software  59  Mind Mapping & Flow Charting Software Freeware - programs Edraw Mind Map Freeware http://www.edrawsoft.com/freemind.php Students can create mind maps (graphical representations of thought processes) for brainstorming, problem solving, rational analysis, and decision marking. Edraw Mind Map is a vector-based freeware with numerous practical examples and templates. It also offers easy to create basic flow charts, mind maps, brainstorming diagrams and sketch maps. Benefits: • Look for relationships - Use lines, colours, arrows, branches or some other way of showing connections between the ideas generated on the mind map. These relationships may be important in the understanding new information or in constructing a structured plan. By personalizing the map with symbols and designs the user will be constructing visual and meaningful relationships between ideas that will assist in him or her recalling and understanding content. • Draw quickly on unlined paper without pausing, judging or editing. All of these things promote linear thinking and the idea of mind mapping is to think creatively in a non-linear manner. There will be plenty of time for modifying the information later on but at this stage it is important to get every possibility into the mind map. • Some find that using capital letters encourages them to get down only the key points. Capitals are also easier to read in a diagram. They may, however, wish to write down some explanatory notes in lower case. • Most find it useful to turn their page on the side and do a mind map in “landscape” style. With the main idea or topic in the middle of the page this gives the maximum space for other ideas to radiate out from the centre. 60  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit • Some of the most useful mind maps are those where data is added to over a period of time. After the initial drawing of the mind map users may wish to highlight things, add information or add questions. For this reason, it is a good idea to leave space so as to further build the map and refine it. CmapTools http://cmap.ihmc.us/conceptmap.html The CmapTools program empowers users to construct, navigate, share and criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps. It allows users to, among many other features, construct their Cmaps in their personal computer, share them on servers (CmapServers) anywhere on the Internet, link their Cmaps to other Cmaps on servers, automatically create web pages of their concept maps on servers, edit their maps synchronously (at the same time) with other users on the Internet, and search the web for information relevant to a concept map. CmapTools has been translated into seventeen (17) different languages. It runs in Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Basque, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Italian, Japanese, Kuna, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. Cmaptools defaults to the language of the operating system, but can be changed in the Preferences menu item. The IHMC CmapTools client is free for use by anybody, whether its use is commercial or non-commercial. FreeMind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map FreeMind is a free, mind-mapping software program written in Java. The recent development has turned it into high productivity tool. The operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click “fold / unfold” and “follow link” operations. Current users of FreeMind use it for the following purposes: • • • • • • • Keeping track of projects, including subtasks, state of subtasks and time recording Project workplace, including links to necessary files, executables, source of information and of course information Workplace for internet research using Google and other sources Keeping a collection of small or middle sized notes with links on some area that expands as needed. Such a collection of notes is sometimes called knowledge base. Essay writing and brainstorming, using colours to show which essays are open, completed, not yet started Use of size of nodes to indicate size of essays. Keeping a small database of something with structure that is either very dynamic or not known in advance. The main disadvantage of such approach when compared to traditional database applications • are poor query possibilities Commented internet favourites or bookmarks, with colours and fonts having the meaning required ThinkGraph http://ets.freetranslation.com/ ThinkGraph is a French product. Using the site the French to English translation of their promotional blurb reads ‘ThinkGraph is a software program that allows for Drawing 2D oriented towards the production of Conceptual Cards. A conceptual card is a destined diagram to represent Ideas (every idea being represented by a basic form such as rectangle, ellipse or picture). This diagram becomes a conceptual card when relations are created between these ideas and that of the links. Hypertext links are associated with these ideas in order to relate towards other ideas (e.g. a definition, a diagram, another conceptual card). ThinkGraph is therefore the intermarriage result between an application of Drawing 2D and an editor of conceptual cards.’ This program may prove very useful for speakers of French http://www.thinkgraph.com/#bodyMenu Section 8: Mind mapping and flow charting software  61  Mind Mapping & Flow Charting Software View Your Mind (vym) www.insilmaril.de/vym/ Semantik http://freehackers.org/~tnagy/kdissert.html Semantik is a mind mapping-like tool to help to produce complicated documents very quickly and efficiently, including presentations and reports. While targeted mostly at students, Semantic can also help teachers, decision maker, engineers and businessmen. Semantik is also available exclusively for Linux and other free operating systems. Although this application shares some similarities with general-purpose mind mapping tools like Freemind or Vym, the very first goal of Semantik is to create general-purpose documents through the use of mind maps. The diagram above was exported directly from vym. It shows some of the features vym offers to collect and present ideas and data. Editing the content of the page in vym is easy and intuitive. The user just ‘grabs something’ with the mouse and moves it to another place. Usually the user will work with two windows: • The Mainwindow shows the map as seen in the image above • The Note editor is used to edit larger text like this one (shown in grey boxes). The note editor always shows the content of the branch selected in the mainwindow. VYM (View Your Mind) is not another drawing tool; it is a thinking tool. It is also a planning tool. It can also be used as a kind of database, too. The idea is to use it dynamically, by changing the map when a user’s thoughts or plans change. The possibility to export the content e.g. to a website, was recently added. Another new export filter allows users to easily create a presentation in Open Office. VYM is a tool used to generate and manipulate maps that graphically show users’ thoughts. Such maps can help to improve creativity and affectivity. Maps can be drawn by hand on paper or a flip chart and help to structure thoughts. While a tree like structure can be drawn by hand or any drawing software vym offers more features to work with such maps. 62  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Portable Solutions Freemind and Xmind are available as part of the AccessApps suite. These programs will run on any MS Windows computer, fully operational from a USB thumb drive. AccessApps is freely available to download and use: http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/. The Xmind application will be added in March 2009 to the previous full version of AccessApps. The Fact Folder and Fact Mapper in textHELP Read & Write have really matured in Version 9. The Fact Mapper can be used to brainstorm ideas with a group of people. It is also now available as an online application. The mobile USB version of Read & Write V9 is now available, being released in early 2009. In Conclusion Mind Mapping is a much discussed and debated genre of software. It is many different things to different people and audiences. Users seem to either respond very favourably to this type of software or dismiss it. Whether it is termed as mind mapping, charting, webbing, brainstorming, planning and organisational software is not the key issue. It is whether it will accrue benefit and be used expeditiously to encourage users of all persuasions and abilities to negotiate tasks using tools that are different from the word processing model of old. The argument for the efficacy of software is in the mature approach to ascertain and meet specific or generic needs. Young people respond favourably to these types of programs, in my experience. They are visual learners and partake and enjoy in the online YouTube experience of rich video and movie content. Use of graphics and symbols supports and helps qualify the text. The creation of mind maps and webs provides holistic representations of data. The mind map or web can then be exported to MS Word for assessment or appraisal or copied and pasted into other presentation programs, such as MS PowerPoint or Open Office Impress. Resources An interesting article that discusses the implications and ramifications of using mind mapping can be located at http://www.ami.ac.uk/ courses/topics/0101_mmp/index.html. Some helpful hints and a guide to create a mind map can be found at http://www.buzanworld.com/Mind_Maps.htm. A description of a mindmap and background information, located at http://www.12manage.com/methods_mind_mapping.html It has some very interesting reading with illustrations and examples of alternate approaches to mind mapping. Programs such as Spark Space provide supports for users who are dyslexic. This program has been specifically designed for this audience. A great deal of research was undertaken to deliver Spark Space and it has unique features that caters to learners who struggle with traditional “flat text” formats. It is a matter of introducing the programs and providing some basic skills. All programs offer a set of ready-made templates. By exploring and experimenting with them, users can begin to see how they might assist them in organising and presenting data. Section 8: Mind mapping and flow charting software  63  SECTION9 Section 9 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Note Taking Software Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 9: Note Taking Software  65  Note Taking Software In this section features that allow users to better organise and prepare their work. Introduction Implications for Users Who are Poorly Organised Benefits of Note Taking Software Note Taking Programs People with acquired grain injury, short-term memory loss issues and poor organisational and planning strategies often enjoy have these utilities to assist them in remembering to attend to tasks that might often be forgotten, dismissed or allayed. Programs are available for all of the major operating systems including MS Windows, MAC OS and Linux. Software companies provide a range of programs, with some catering to corporate use with collaborative sharing mechanisms whilst others are just handy little utilities that assist in recording information, to be acted upon later by an individual user. Portable Solutions In Conclusion Implications for Users Who are Poorly Organised Introduction People of all ages when on their computer often want to record information quickly. They also want to remember where it is and locate it in order to start, complete or check a task. Other users want to set an alarm so as to be on time, contact a colleague or remind themselves of a critical event in the day. The advent of sticky note programs provided an electronic means to ‘stick’ a note on the computer display. The various programs that are now available all perform the same type of function. Some provide colour schemes and themes. Others have the facility to run over a LAN or network, whilst some allow for insertion of photos and graphics. Some allow hyper linking to web sites, other documents on a LAN and emails. Fundamentally, they all provide a means by which users can become more independent as they can plan ahead and schedule events or record information on the fly. These small and discreet programs have 66  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Individuals who misplace their work, or who do not take accurate notes and leave things to the last minute often enjoy having a sticky note program on their display. They can quickly type a note, or scribble a diagram. Data can be copied and pasted from any source and an image can be inserted or attached. Their notes can be displayed one at a time or as a list. Some programs will help timetable their activities with use of visual and auditory reminders. Benefits of Note Taking Software NovaMind Express - offers a free download trial copy www.novamind.com/mind-mapping/mind-mapping-for-students.php Benefits include: • • • • • • • The ability to plan and keep notes To assist with acquired brain injury To assist those who need support and own their own PC Notebook so that there notes are portable and always with them To alert to minor and major events during a day To take notes from CDs, DVDs and other resources To copy data to and from web sites To set timers and alarms for critical events As with all software utilities and programs, the particular program that has been chosen has to work within an operating system (i.e. versions of MS Windows, MAC OS, Linux or Ubuntu). It also has to accommodate the visual, cognitive and physical needs of the user and perform the task to a satisfactory level of performance or better, to warrant continued use. Freeware and Open Source To assist in being more organised whilst working at the computer, a number of handy small programs are available freely to download, install and use. Freeware versions at no cost to the user include: • • • • • • • • Free Sticky Notes V2.0 www.batchconverter.com/FreeStickyNotes-download-3012.shtml Hott Notes www.hottnotes.com/ (portable version also available) Stickies V6.7 http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/ Sticky Notes V2.0.0.4 www.cs.utexas.edu/~tbone/stickynotes.html Sticker Lite www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/desktop_free_notes_ software/ Memo Fix Digital www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/desktop_free_notes_ software/ Freebie Notes V3.13 www.freebienotes.com/stick-notes/index.html AT Notes http://atnotes.free.fr/ ATnotes is a FREE program that creates notes on the desktop. It lives in the system tray, takes very few resources, and supports a lot of languages. Most programs have web sites to download user guides, FAQ sheets or help files. They can also be used alongside text-to-speech programs including Natural Reader (www.naturalreaers.com) that will run as a floating toolbar. Creating and maintaining a large number of notes is easy. A Note Manager allows you view your desktop, wastebasket, and archived notes and perform batch operations on them. Note Taking Programs Commercial Programs PostIt Digital NotesV4.5 - - formerly a free program but now is a commercial product. It is a very reliable and robust with excellent features. www.3m.com/us/office/postit/digital/digital_notes.html.M MoRUN.net Sticker desktop notes http://www.sticky-notes.net/windows-sticky-notes-free.html Section 9: Note Taking Software  67  Note Taking Software Most of these programs offer similar facilities, including: • Time and date stamping • The ability to insert and append graphics • Customised colouring of text and background colour • Reminders and alarms • Ability to place notes on your desktop, visually reminding you of important events every time the computer is turned on • Creation of checklists to keep track of what has been accomplished or has yet to have been complete • The ability to scribble, draw, annotate and copy pictures to decorate the desktop, or use a Tablet PC or external drawing tablet • Usually, the scribble note feature allows users to draw in a set or freeform size • Most offer a simple and direct, intuitive interface • Users can choose colour, font, or translucency level • Most allow you to create and save themes • Editing notes is easy and non-obstructive, usually by double-clicking on the note body and editing it • Managing a large number of notes is usually easy where a facility allows users to view the desktop, wastebasket, and archived notes and perform batch operations on them • Users can store and print notes as well • Copy cut and paste data between programs and a note taking program 68  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Portable Solutions The Hott Notes is packed within the AccessApps suite of programs. It can be downloaded from http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/ accessapps/. Hott notes V4.1 portable edition is available for use from a USB flash drive so that users can take their notes wherever they go. In Conclusion Note taking programs are not new. Users who require reminding, or are forgetful or who can’t organise their work satisfactorily usually respond well to this genre of software. They are more in control and can create quick, useful notes to remind them of tasks - instead of relying on friends or family members. It gives them a greater degree of independence. The notes can be saved, archived, printed or displayed in a number of ways. Text can be copied and pasted to or from applications. Alarms and visual reminders can keep students on task and more prepared to meet deadlines and keep to timetables. SECTION10 Section 10 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Daisy Reader Software Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 10: Daisy Reader Software  69  In this section Daisy Reader Software DAISY is for everyone who needs accessible information and for everyone who loves to read. Introduction What is DAISY? Background to DAISY – a DTP Book Benefits of DAISY Commercial and Free Software that provide Daisy Book Access Benefits to Students DAISY Multimedia can be: • A talking book or computerised text, • A synchronised presentation of text and audio produced according to the DAISY Standards. While reading a DAISY book, a reader can go to the next or previous page, chapter or sentence. These books can be distributed on a CD or DVD, a memory card or through the Internet. DAISY books can be listened to on standalone DAISY players, computers using DAISY playback software such as AMIS, mobile phones, and MP3 players – (albeit with limited navigation functionality). A computerized text DAISY book can be read using refreshable Braille display or screen reading software, printed as Braille book on paper, converted to a talking book using synthesised voice or a human narration, and also printed on paper as large print book. In addition, it can be read as large print text on computer screen. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ DAISY_Digital_Talking_Book] What is DAISY? • • Introduction • Digital Accessible Information System, or DAISY, is a standard based on XML, which is a simple subset of W3C defined SGML. Using this framework, ‘a talking book format is presented with enabled navigation within a sequential and hierarchical structure consisting of (marked-up) text synchronized with audio. DAISY assists people who for different reasons have problems using regular printed media’. • DAISY books have the benefits of regular audio books, but they are superior due to the embedded navigation levels (currently six in the DAISY 2.02 standard), the content (i.e. other objects such as images, graphics) and displaying synchronized text to speech. DAISY books can enable users who are blind to navigate an encyclopaedia. An encyclopaedia as a regular audio book would be useless because it lacks search and navigation features and requires a linear listen. 70  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit • • • DAISY is a way of preparing an audio book, usually on CD, that allows the reader many more options than those available with any of the previous cassette or audio CD books. A body of experts responding to suggestions from blind or vision-impaired readers from around the world developed DAISY in 1995. The DAISY format gives people who are blind and vision impaired an improved way to read a book. The International DAISY Consortium includes many major organisations and corporations who have recognized the superiority of this standard. DAISY is a format designed specifically for people who cannot read print due to a print disability. It now caters to a much broader range of potential users in education and the wider community. Libraries for the blind around the world are producing DAISY books now around 125,000 DAISY books have already been produced. Vision loss negatively impacts a person’s ability to access information in a meaningful and useful manner. Reading, access to information and learning are an ongoing part of life. Without these, a person is severely restricted in education, career and lifelong, daily learning. DAISY was designed to alleviate and avoid restrictions that often present in accessing text in other formats. The DAISY System is transforming the reading and learning experiences of people who have a print disability in over 50 countries around the world. DAISY is a very flexible and expansive format with numerous benefits to a wide range of users, not only to blind and vision impaired people. It is quickly becoming a standard format that will enable struggling readers, students with learning difficulties and others to access text in a faster, more organised, more powerful and elegant manner. Background to DAISY – a DTP Book richest, multimedia reading experience and the greatest level of access. The XML textual content file contains the structure and the full text of the book. The audio and the text are synchronized. • Benefits of DAISY DAISY books offer numerous advantages over books on tape and commercial books on CD: • A traditional talking book is an analog representation of a print publication. A Digital Talking Book (DTB) is a multimedia representation of a print publication. In both instances, the rendering of the audio is in human voice. At a very early point in the development of the DAISY standard, talking book readers from many countries were consulted regarding their reading requirements and their vision of a fully accessible audio book. Those who provided input made it very clear that analog recordings did not meet their reading and information needs. Access to points within the books, awkwardness of the medium itself, sound quality plus numerous other issues indicated that producers of talking books had to begin the move to a digital platform. However, a digitally produced human voice talking book in itself would not resolve all of the issues, particularly the issues of accessibility and navigation from point to point within the book. DAISY DTBs do meet talking book reader requirements by providing access to the talking book that has never before been possible with a human voice production of a print book. The three basic types of DAISY publications are: • Audio with NCX: DTB with structure. The NCX is the Navigation Control Centre, a file containing all points in the book to which the user may navigate. The XML textual content file, if present, contains the structure of the book and may contain links to features such as narrated footnotes, etc. Some DTBs of this type may also contain additional textual components, for example, index or glossary, supporting keyword searching. • Audio and full text: DTB with structure and complete text and audio. This form of a DTB is the most complete and provides the Text and no audio: DTB without audio. The XML textual content file contains the structure and full text of the book. There are no audio files. This type of DAISY DTB may, for example, be rendered with synthetic speech or with a refreshable braille display. [Source: http://www.daisy.org/about_us/dtbooks.shtml] • • • • DAISY books give people who are blind or print-disabled an improved way to read. With links between text and narration, DAISY books allow a reader to go to directly to specific sections, chapters or pages, and place multiple bookmarks. This ability to easily move around the book is not available with books on tape or CD. When a user finishes reading, a digital playback device will “remember” where the text is stopped, and resume play at that same place when the user starts to read again. DAISY books have better sound quality when compared to books on tape. The digital recording eliminates the traditional hiss and background noise found on cassette, especially books that have been played many times. This is important to readers who may have some hearing impairment. An entire DAISY book can be contained on one CD, whereas books on tape span multiple cassettes (and commercial books on CD span multiple CDs). One CD eliminates the frustration of sorting multiple tapes for low vision readers and prevents the hassle of missing or damaged parts of a book. Up to 50 hours of audio may be contained on one DAISY CD - the equivalent of more than 30 standard cassettes. In order to provide these features, DAISY books require a special digital playback device (similar to a portable CD player) or software program. However, many digital playback devices also play standard audio books and music on CDs, and MP3 files. The digital playback devices gives prompts and describes the function of each button so there is no need to remember too many instructions. [Source: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=594#what] Section 10: Daisy Reader Software   71  Daisy Reader Software Commercial and Free Software that provide Daisy Book Access Commercial OCR Software: Dolphin Publisher http://www.yourdolphin.com/productdetail.asp?id=12 • Anyone creating alternative formats to print, including: publishers, transcription services, colleges, employers, trainers or anyone attempting to publish information in compliance with disability acts. • Key Benefits: • Allows users to create a DAISY digital talking book in minutes. • Create talking books with fully synchronised text and audio. • Use human recorded audio, synthetic speech or record audio directly into Dolphin Publisher for use in talking books • Import HTML or MS Word documents or type text directly into Dolphin Publisher. • Includes HTML editing facility for simple corrections to be made within Dolphin Publisher. • Includes copyright tools for publishers to protect content from unauthorised copying or playback. Book Wizard Reader www.aph.org/tech/bwr_info.htm The Book Wizard Reader software reads Digital Talking Books. Supports all Digital Talking Book formats including Daisy 2 books and Daisy 3 books. PRS Pro www.plextalk.com/in/prs-pro_top.html PLEXTALK Recording Software Pro (PRS Pro) is a DAISY2.02 production tool, which can import DAISY2.0 content for editing or upgrading. Three functions are included in one package (Recording/Editing/ CD-R Writing). Note: PRS Pro can only produce DAISY books that are structured audio and it does not have the capability of producing full text DAISY books. READ:OUTLOUD www.donjohnston.com/products/read_outloud/ Read:OutLoud is an accessible text reader that provides below-grade level readers access to the general curriculum. Since 92% of students with IEPs are reading below proficient levels, a widespread solution is necessary. Up until now, it has been cost-prohibitive to provide technology to every student with an IEP. It can read NIMAS (instantly converts “on the fly”); PDF; Rich Text Format (RTF); Text Files (TXT); XML; HTML; DAISY and Web Browser. 72  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit DAISY players ezDaisy www.telex.com/Talkingbook/ Product.aspx?MarketID=13&Cat egoryID=32&ProductID=104 The ezDaisy is portable and easy to operate with basic functions that make reading accessible for all. The ezDaisy digital talking book player plays Daisy, Niso, MP3 and CDs. PlexTalk PTR2 Recorder http://www.plextalk.com/in/ptr2_top.html PTR2 is designed to be a high quality recorder with the ability to create DAISY 2.02, audio only, books and Music CDs. It can play DAISY titles, music CDs and audio file CDs and CF cards. It can be used as a CD-RW or memory card drive when connected to a computer. For quicker and easier editing of your DAISY content, the PTR2 is supplied with the PlexTalk Recording Software (PRS). This package provides users with all the necessary tools to record, edit and finalise users own audio-only DAISY 2.02 books. The PTR2 can be operated in 2 main modes called “Normal” mode and “Book Creator” mode. Users can switch between these 2 modes at any time. Also supports languages including Danish, Dutch, French, German and Swedish. PTN1 www.plextalk.com/in/ptn1_top.html The model PTN1 CD player from Plextalk is a way for users to enjoy their favourite audio titles including: Daisy Digital Talking Books, music CD’s, MP3 CD’s or audio books on CD. The PTN1 is attractive yet rugged and is designed to provide reliable service. With easy, completely accessible controls and a high quality built in speaker, the PTN1 can be operated and enjoyed by virtually any user. The PTN1 includes a host of special features to assist the visually impaired user such as a navigational voice guide, speed and pitch controls, and page/ time jump functions. Victor Reader Classic Plus www.humanware.com/en-australia/products/learning_disabilities/_ details/id_109/victor_reader_classicx.html • “Go to page” function, to jump to any specific page instantly • Easy CD insertion/removal - also plays audio and MP3 CDs • Play speed with pitch compensation with highly intelligible variable play speed • Supports all DAISY navigation levels Navigate easily by chapter, section, page, paragraph • Key Describer Function Speaks functions of each key • • • Dedicated Sleep button, power light indicator and audio announcement of battery capacity Digital Sound Quality Use the high-quality built-in speaker or your earphone set Compact, portable and sturdy and uses rechargeable batteries and built-in carrying handle Victor Reader Streak www.humanware.com/en-australia/products/learning_disabilities/_ details/id_108/victor_reader_stream.html This versatile, powerful DAISY-MP3 and NISO player lets users read and navigate through complex books, including reference manuals as well as novels and magazines. Users can also use its built in text to speech to read books in text format such as Bookshare. There are many more functions, including an integrated microphone to record voice notes. It is small, discreet and very portable. DAISY Reader Freeware AMIS http://daisy.org/projects/amis/ a free DAISY reader application AMIS stands for Adaptive Multimedia Information System. AMIS is a software program that can be used to read DAISY books. It is self-voicing, meaning that no specialized screen-reading software is needed in order for it to be used by visually impaired people. AMIS is open source software and is provided free of charge. AMIS works well with several major screen reading software packages: • Jaws for Windows scripts are included with the installer • Window Eyes • Hal and Supernova Read:Outloud Bookshare Edition http://www.donjohnston.com/products/rol_bookshare/index.html In 2009, students who qualify under the Chafee copyright exemption amendment will use Don Johnston’s Read:OutLoud Bookshare Edition text reader to access thousands of electronic books, educational materials and resources in NIMAS and DAISY from the Bookshare website. The program’s goal is to eliminate barriers for users with reading disabilities and to provide the necessary tools to ensure access. DTBmaker http://w3.wmcnet.org/daisymaker/ (for MAC OSX) DTBmaker version 2.6 is a new version of DTBmaker for MAC OSX. This single application will produce all three Daisy formats (Daisy 2.02, Daisy/NISO 2002 and Daisy/NISO 2005). This version supports a simple method of making a digital talking book form a collection of audio files, support for pictures in books, and greater support for NIMAS files. It also supports both Cepstral and Apple Speech Manager voices as well as production of books from pre-recorded content. Iduna DAISY Reader http://sourceforge.net/projects/idair NOTE: For a complete list of software playback tools, refer to the DAISY Consortium web site at: http://www.daisy.org/tools/tools. shtml?Cat=splayback. Benefits • • Plugin for MS Word http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_ id=208610 (30 Mb file) The “Save as DAISY XML” add-in was created through an open source project with Microsoft, Sonata Software Ltd. and the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium and can be downloaded freely on Sourceforge. • • The ability to move from page to page, place a bookmark if there’s a passage you want to go back to, and at the end of the reading session, the player will “remember” where you have stopped even if he or she hasn’t read other books in the interim. With the ability to place multiple bookmarks and move around quickly, users will find DAISY ideal for locating material quickly. DAISY navigation is handy for finding the articles of interest in magazines and skipping to sections they want in reference books such as cookbooks or how-to manuals. Some digital playback devices are available that have the ability to record voice, narration, additional comments etc, Dorina DAISY Reader V1.0 (DDR) http://www.daisy.org/tools/tools.shtml?id=118 This DAISY 3 reading software developed by the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind in Brazil is free to use and share. The DDR DAISY reading software can be downloaded in 3 different language versions: English, Spanish and Portuguese. DDR is designed as an add-on to the Firefox browser and is available from the Firefox add-on site. Section 10: Daisy Reader Software   73  Daisy Reader Software In Conclusion It seems that the two most likely standards for re-versioning and publishing text and books will soon be in MS Word and DAISY formats. DAISY can be reformatted quickly into all other formats including plain text, HTML, Braille, large print and Word. DAISY has so many benefits in accessing text due to very powerful and flexible navigation. The TTS aspect and quality of voice has recently been resolved due to advances in sound quality in TTS technologies. Vision Australia is pioneering the introduction and promotion of DAISY books in schools and in the general community. Their recent initiatives will result in greater acceptance and use of DAISY as a leading alternate format. Programs that have DAISY reader capability built-in include textHELP Read & Write V9 and Wynn V5.1. Resources: A useful video is available on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HZicWnCfHlw that clearly shows a user accessing a physical daisy reader device. Other videos are also available concerning DAISY. Some pertinent FAQs concerning DAISY can be located at http://www. visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=687. A very comprehensive web site with information on Digital Talking Books, including the DAISY format can be located at http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/books/dtb. html. DAISY books are available at http://www.bookshare.org/. An older article worth reading is: www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/meetings/ disabilities/daisy.html. 74  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit SECTION11 Section 11 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Word Processors Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 11: Word Processors 75  In this section Word Processors Introduction Background to Text Editing and Word Processing Software Features and Functions of a Text Editing Program Commercial and Free Software – Word Processors Web Based Word Processing Tools Universal Access Using Word Processors Dedicated Word Processors for Younger Students In Conclusion Introduction “Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor program. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.” A word processor (more formally known as document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of printable material. Word processor may also refer to an obsolete type of stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 80s, combining the keyboard text-entry and printing functions of an electric typewriter with a dedicated computer for the editing of text. Although features and design varied between manufacturers and models, with new features added as technology advanced, word processors for several years usually featured a monochrome display and the ability to save documents on cassettes, memory cards or floppy diskettes. Later models introduced innovations such as spell-checking programs, increased formatting options, and dot-matrix printing. As the more versatile combination of a personal computer and separate printer became commonplace, the word processor disappeared. 76  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit They are descended from early text formatting tools (sometimes called text justification tools, from their only real capability). Word processing was one of the earliest applications for the personal computer in office productivity. Although early word processors used tag-based mark-up for document formatting, most modern word processors take advantage of a graphical user interface. Most are powerful systems consisting of one or more programs that can produce any arbitrary combination of images, graphics and text, the latter handled with typesetting capability. Microsoft Word is the most widely used computer word processing system; Microsoft estimates over five hundred million people use the Office Suite, which includes Word. There are also many other commercial word processing applications, such as WordPerfect, which dominated the market from the mid-1980s to early-1990s, particularly for machines running Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system. Open-source applications such as Abiword, KWord, LyX and OpenOffice Suite Writer are rapidly gaining in popularity. Online word processors such as Google Docs are a relatively new category. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor] Background to Text Editing and Word Processing Software Electronic text files without formatting (as created with Windows Notepad or programs such as TextEdit) are known as plain text. This format is important because it is flexible and has total compatibility. File sizes are small (in terms of bytes), so can be transferred easily between PCs, laptops, Macs, Smartphones, Braille note-takers or USB thumb drives and opened with a massive choice of programs. Text can then be formatted and converted as required by the user and contains no inaccessible material so is entirely accessible to screen reader users using text-to-speech software programs. Features and Functions of a Text Editing Program Text editors (modern examples of which include Notepad, BBEdit, Kate, Gedit), were the precursors of word processors. While offering facilities for composing and editing text, they do not format documents. This can be done by batch document processing systems. Text editors are now used mainly by programmers, website designers, and computer system administrators. They are also useful when fast start-up times, small file sizes, editing speed and simplicity of operation is preferred over formatting. They can be used to generate or edit HTML code and many have additional features over and above the MAC OS or MS Windows OS packaged versions. A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files. These are usually small programs that take up little hard disk space and launch very quickly. Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code. There are important differences between plain text files created by a text editor, and document files created by word processors such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or OpenOffice Writer. Briefly: • A plain text file is represented and edited by showing all the characters, as they are present in the file. The only characters usable for ‘mark-up’ are the control characters of the used character set; in practice this is new line, tab and form feed. The most commonly used character set is ASCII, especially recently, as plain text files are more used for programming and configuration and less frequently used for documentation than in the past. • Documents created by a word processor generally contain file format-specific “control characters” beyond what is defined in the character set. These enable functions like bold, italic, fonts, columns, tables, etc. These and other common page formatting symbols were once associated only with desktop publishing but are now commonplace in the simplest word processor. • Word processors can usually edit a plain text file and save in the plain text file format. However one must take care to tell the program that this is what is wanted. This is especially important in cases such as source code, HTML, and configuration and control files. Otherwise the file will contain those “special characters” unique to the word processor’s file format and will not be handled correctly by the utility the files were intended for. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editor] Features and Functions of a Word Processing Program Word processing typically refers to text manipulation functions such as automatic generation of: • Indices of keywords and their page numbers • Tables of contents with section titles and their page numbers • Tables of figures with caption titles and their page numbers • Batch mailings using a form letter template and an address database (also called mail merging) • Cross-referencing with section or page numbers • Footnote numbering, headers and footers • Chapters and section formatting • New versions of a document using variables (e.g. model numbers, product names) Other word processing functions include “spell checking” (actually checks against wordlists), “grammar checking” (checks for grammar errors), and a “thesaurus” function (finds words with similar or opposite meanings). In most languages grammar is very complex, so grammar checkers tend to be unreliable and not always accurate or helpful. Other common features include collaborative editing, comments and annotations, support for images, diagrams, video and sound files and internal cross-referencing. Word processors can be distinguished from several other related forms of software, such as text editors and notepad utilities. Later desktop publishing programs (first seen predominantly on MAC OS computers) were specifically designed to allow elaborate layout for printing and publication, but offered only limited support for editing. Typically, desktop publishing programs allowed users to import text that has been Text files are much more useful when using text-to-speech programs, in such instances as reading emails, study notes and eBooks. Sites including www.gutenberg.org provide over 28,000 books in a number of formats. Other sites include http://www.bookshare.org/, http://www.baen.com/library/, http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/freebooks.htm?cache and http://manybooks.net/ and all offer a number of alternate formats. Section 11: Word Processors  77  Word Processors previously written using a text editor or word processor. Almost all word processors enable users to employ styles, which are used to automate consistent formatting of text body, fonts, colours, titles, subtitles and selected or highlighted text. Styles greatly simplify managing the formatting of large documents, since changing a style automatically changes all text that has been applied to the style. Even in shorter documents styles can save a great deal of time while formatting. The default styles and examples in MS Word are rarely changed. Commercial and Free Software – Word Processors WP - Commercial Software MS Office - Windows Versions (MS Office 97/ 2000/ 2003 / 2007) - for MAC OS (MS Office 98 to 2008) www.microsoft.com The versions of MS Word are the leading applications in office suite technology and most often used in education and commerce. There is a free download of MS Word Viewer 2003 - http://www.microsoft. com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en that will allow you to open, view, read and print a Word file even if you do not own a copy of the program. 78  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Corel WordPerfect Office X4 http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/au/en/Product/1207676528492 #tabview=tab0 WordPerfect Office X4 is the most recent version of the popular office suite from Corel. • An alternative to Microsoft Office • WordPerfect WP application is included in this office suite from Corel – formerly a leader in this genre • Corel WordPerfect Office includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations & email • World’s first hybrid on and offline office suite. • First PDF office suite, supporting an advanced PDF workflow • First format-neutral office suite, supporting more than 60 file formats including ODF, OOXML and Office 2007 • Also includes a handy research and note-booking tool Lotus Symphony Documents http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/ product_wpe • Easy to create documents with predefined document templates • Fast formatting with predefined styles for paragraphs, characters, and headings • Contextual toolbars and editing menus • Inline spell checking and correction • Graphics that you can insert to create a variety of tables, charts, diagrams, and drawn items • Automatic creation of a table of contents, footnotes, indexes and footers and headers • Support for a variety of file types, including Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite • Export documents to Adobe PDF format for easy sharing Lotus Symphony for Mac V1.2.1 http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/mac Lotus Symphony 1.2.1 is available for Mac OS X 10.5 (Intel). Lotus Symphony 1.2.1 combines the functionality of the Mac OS platform with a clean interface for a combination of innovation and simplicity for office productivity applications. Lotus Symphony not only works on Mac OS X but also is optimised to take advantage of the elegance of Aqua GUI theme with the innovation and simplicity of MAC OS and is available in 18 languages. AppleWorks 6.2.9 for Mac OS http://www.apple.com/au/appleworks/ It offers numerous built-in assistants or templates — or a blank slate in one of the six modules. AppleWorks includes functions for word processing, spreadsheets, painting, drawing, presentations and databases. Users can also work with Microsoft Word and Excel documents with the included file translators — even in the 2001 editions. MS Works 9 http://www.microsoft.com/products/Works/default.mspx These suites have been available for a number of years. The look and feel in “works” suites is usually similar to that of the MS Office Suites, but is more affordable packages. WP – Freeware or Operating System Programs Open Office Suite 2009 http://openoffice.org-2009.com/index.asp?aff=101&camp=gg_oo_ au&se=google It is a fully compatible Office Suite that includes Writer, an equivalent program to MS Word. It can open and save MS Word documents, as well as text, RTF and even PDF. • Create Writer word processing files and then import into ‘Impress’ presentations • Open MS Word, Excel & PowerPoint files • Read and Write PDF files just like Adobe Reader • Improved features of MS Office • Hundreds of Open Office Templates are available AbiWord V2.6.9 http://www.abisource.com/ AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to MS Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks. AbiWord is unique among word processors in it being a fully cross-platform word processor. AbiWord will run on virtually any operating system including MS Windows, Linux and Mac OS. This combined with the support for internationalisation (the ability to run AbiWord in many languages) gives AbiWord a massive potential user-base. Suffice to say that AbiWord 2.6.8 is an award winning, small, fast, fully featured and cross- platform word processor MS Windows – WordPad Part of MS Windows OS WordPad is an extremely useful program that has a number of basic features. Many students benefit from its simplicity and lack of toolbar options. Text files can be saved using SAVE AS, choosing the Text Document option. Free Software – Text Editors MS Windows – Notepad Part of MS Windows operating system Zulu Pad http://prashantsarkar.blogspot.com/2006/08/zulu-pad-smart.html Zulu Pad is a personal wiki notepad - a smart cross between a notepad and a desktop wiki! It automatically and smartly links all users’ notes together using hyperlinks BBEdit http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ (MAC OS) BBEdit is a leading professional HTML and text editor for the MAC OS. Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, BBEdit provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text. Useful features, including grey pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files (even unopened files on remote servers) and project definition tools. Gedit http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/ Lightweight editing tool for the GNOME desktop found in many distributions of Linux, BSD and other Unix systems. Web Based Word Processing Tools Google Docs https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=w ritely&passive=true&nui=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdo cs.google.com%2F&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google. com%2F<mpl=homepage&rm=false The latest software for word processing and text entry is also on the web with programs such as Google Docs. This software is accessed and used whilst online. It is anywhere, anytime access to software without the need for a program to be installed on a computer – or a particular version. It is a wonderful collaboration tool as users can work with documents and share information online. It saves creating documents and then either emailing them or saving them to CDs DVDs or USB drives and physically ‘handing them over’ to another person. This may create problems, as there will be multiple copies in Section 11: Word Processors  79  Word Processors circulation. Tracking and maintaining the original and most current version may cause issues with some users. By creating, storing, sharing and collaborating online, one master copy exists, which is obtainable from any Internet based computer. The downside is when the Internet is not available; or a server or web service is not operating. Create and share work online • Upload from and save to the desktop • Determine and choose who can access documents • Share changes in real time • Files are stored securely online – accessed from any computer, anywhere, anytime • Another great benefit – is that it is free to use the software! A comprehensive list of new features can be located at: http://www. google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html WriteOnline http://www.cricksoft.com/uk/writeonline/ This is a similar commercial venture by Crick Software, the publishers of Clicker 5 software. It goes many steps further with scaffolding supports including text to speech, word prediction, onscreen grids, visual supports and master templates and features that are available to individual users. Once customised and set up, the programs and features ‘travel’ with the user, wherever they choose to work. Users will be familiar with WriteOnline’s menus and toolbar because it follows modern standards. WriteOnline offers a range of writing support features not found in any other writing tool. Users can use it on any computer, anywhere. WriteOnline’s clear voice enables users to review what has been written. Active engagement with text encourages correction of errors and development of writing independence with word prediction using Wordflow™ technology. It predicts words that fit the context of their writing. Confidence grows as users compose flowing text with accurate spelling and grammatically correct sentences. Wordbar brings curriculum writing tasks within the reach of all learners by giving instant point-and-click access to specific words and phrases for a large range of writing tasks. Users can design and create their own Wordbars, and there are hundreds of ready-made ones in the program and available freely on the web. Luminotes (An example of a Web 2 tool) http://luminotes.com/ Luminotes is a WYSIWYG personal wiki notebook for organizing notes and ideas. It’s designed for note taking and note keeping without the hassle of learning special markup codes. Users simply start typing. Luminotes is open source / free software. Potential uses may include: • Outline a story, a text response, persuasive essay or write a poem • Plan a trip, an excursion, camp or event • Collect recipes, formulas, information and record data • Record their ideas and thoughts, with references or links to other sites • Take notes – anywhere, anytime • Collaborate with other users and share notes Portable Apps - The popular AccessApps is now part of EduApps http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/ It is one part of a growing suite of portable applications that can be freely downloaded from the web, and installed onto a 4GB or higher capacity USB thumb drive. It contains Open Office Org as well as AbiWord word processor. It also offers access to PDF files with Sumatra PDF and Foxit Reader, two mind mapping tools – Freemind and Xmind and a reader designed for dyslexics - PowerReader. These portable applications are literally available using MS Windows computers. Not only are the word processor text creation tools available, but it ois possible to store the information of the thumb drive as well. They are completely independent of others who in the past would have had to install and configure software. In addition, they can customise the toolbars and performance of programs such as Open Office Writer and save their work in compatible formats (e.g. read, write and save MS Word 2003 documents) as well as to plain text, RTF, HTML and PDF formats. They are in charge, they are independent and the software is fully portable and accessible. 80  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Universal Access Using Word Processors Useful Features There are many handy features that can assist students when using MS Word. Using keyboard shortcuts can save time, effort and having to continually locate the mouse. They are exceptionally useful for people who are blind, vision impaired or who find using a pointing device difficult – or impossible! Simple strategies such as pressing Ctrl-2 or Ctrl-5 will change line spacing to double or one and a half spacing. Double clicking on a word will highlight it. Double-clicking in the margin will highlight a paragraph, with three clicks highlighting or selecting the entire document (also Ctrl-A). Ctrl S brings up the Save dialogue box, with Ctrl-P the print window. Ctrl-Z undoes the last action (or the redo function), Ctrl-X cuts, Ctrl-C copies with Ctrl-V performs pasting. With text selected, Ctrl-I will action italics, Ctrl-B boldfacing and Ctrl-U underling it. By knowing and using a series of keyboard shortcuts, you can be faster and more productive. Of course, users who are blind and severely vision impaired need to know all of these commands, remember them and then apply them! Users can work with tables; insert graphics, sounds and video. Files, data and formula can be imbedded from Access and Excel as well as other leading programs. Software including Inspiration and Spark Space Educator can be used to work within mind map and brainstorming environments and then export to MS Word format. Text can be assigned a style that can be selected and used for headings and body text, with sub headers for consistency in layout and ease of reading. A summary can be generated as well as word count and even a Flesch Kincaid Reading level! The Sage - A free thesaurus http://www.sequencepublishing.com/thesage.html WordWeb - A free thesaurus http://wordweb.info/free/ - initially designed for users to ‘cheat’ at crosswords! TinyTalk A small, handy spell checker that sits in the task bar, watching for spelling errors http://tinyspell.m6.net/ In Conclusion There are many different options for entering, storing, editing, reversioning, collaborating, sharing and printing text. All applications serve a purpose. Some will require very simple solutions. Others will need additional supports. Yet others will want to insert all manner of media and work with other applications and hyperlink to web sites and documents on servers and HTML code. Some might want to program, with others wanting high quality desktop publishing features to layout text in a variety of ways. Younger or less capable users may require instant symbols or graphic supports, onscreen word banks, pop up onscreen keyboards, text-to-speech or word prediction. Most users require a good reliable spell checker; possibly in league with a phonetic spell checker as in a literacy support program textHELP Read & Write software. More and more we see younger users working online or with portable applications. This means that they can access and work with text, data and documents on any preferred computer at their disposal. Long gone is a dedicated computer terminal that just performed basic word processing and data entry (as in the early Wang terminals). Powerful Addins WordTalk http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/ This is a free utility that imbeds itself as a toolbar in MS Word 97, 2000 and 2003 and as an addin toolbar in MS Office 2007. It provides text-to-speech with a spell checker and thesaurus. For students with reading and writing difficulties, having text reinforced by hearing it read aloud can be very useful. Specialised programs have existed to do this for a long time, and in many cases are extremely helpful and highly appropriate and should be seriously considered, perhaps in consultation with professional advice where necessary. WordTalk, though, is a free text-to-speech plugin developed for use with all versions of Microsoft Word (from Word 97 upwards). It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. Powerful supports Section 11: Word Processors  81  Word Processors Resources http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.p This links to http://TextEditors.org, the home for text editor reviews, analysis, and commentary by the community. It stores the largest collection of text editor information on the web and has been designed to be as inclusive as possible, including any platform, any OS, any chip, any language. A useful definition and explanation of word processing and the various associated functions in plain English can be located at http://www. webopedia.com/TERM/W/word_processing.html. 82  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit A handy and useful Blog can be found at http://wordprocessing.about. com/b/. About.com has quite a few practical fact sheets and user guides, http://wordprocessing.about.com/. SECTION12 Section 12 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Speech Recognition Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 12: Speech Recognition  83  Speech Recognition In this section Background to Speech Recognition Software Introduction Background to Speech Recognition Software Catering to Disability Key Issues Performance of speech recognition systems Speech Recognition Programs Portable Solutions Universal Access using Speech Recognition Software People with a range of different disabilities often benefit from using speech recognition programs. It is especially useful for people who have difficulty with or are unable to use their hands. This may have resulted from physical conditions from birth or an acquired injury or trauma (e.g. a stroke), as well as mild repetitive stress injuries. It can also involve disabilities that require alternative input for support in accessing the computer. In fact, people who used the keyboard continually over a period of time and developed RSI became an early market for speech recognition. Speech recognition is commonly used in deaf telephony, such as voicemail to text, relay services, and captioned telephone services. Many industries now rely on Voice and/or Speech Recognition for a range of automated tasks, including communications, artificial intelligence and security systems Introduction Catering to Disability One of the most sought after inclusive technology products for students is actually a technology that was primarily designed for other purposes. “One of the most notable domains for the commercial application of speech recognition in the United States has been health care and in particular the work of the medical transcriptionist. According to industry experts, at its inception, speech recognition (SR) was sold as a way to completely eliminate transcription rather than make the transcription process more efficient, hence it was not accepted. It was also the case that SR at that time was often technically deficient. Additionally, to be used effectively, it required changes to the ways physicians worked and documented clinical encounters, which many if not all were reluctant to do. Users with learning disabilities who have problems with thought-to-paper communication (they formulate ideas but are processed incorrectly causing them to end up differently on paper) can benefit from the software as it helps to overlap that weakness. There are many who would rather speak than write or type. Others have more control over the language used or words expressed verbally than written. Some with poor motor function benefit from being able to speak into a microphone, at their own rate, rather than be restricted by poor spelling, dyslexia, minimal or approximated typing skills or lack of confidence. Users who have autism and other syndromes often find starting and initiating writing difficult if not impossible. The biggest limitation to speech recognition automating transcription, however, is seen as the software. The nature of narrative dictation is highly interpretive and often requires judgment that may be provided by a real human but not yet by an automated system. Another limitation has been the extensive amount of time required by the user and/or system provider to train the software. Speech recognition (also known as automatic speech recognition or computer speech recognition) converts spoken words to machine-readable input (for example, to key presses, using the binary code for a string of character codes). The term “voice recognition” is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to speech recognition, when actually referring to speaker recognition, which attempts to identify the person speaking, as opposed to what is being said. Confusingly, journalists and manufacturers of devices that use speech recognition for control commonly use the term Voice Recognition when they mean Speech Recognition.” [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition] 84  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Being able to speak clearly, with some fluency and control, using consistent speech patterns with sufficient volume and clarity will be necessary for some degree of success. Users vary with their performance. There are some technical computer hardware and sound card, microphone and configuration issues that may need be resolved as well as practise, continued exposure, a knowledge and application of key voice commands and appropriate working environments. Background noise, vibrations, unexpected sounds and other extraneous noise issues may interfere. With noise cancelling microphones, and high quality USB to analogue converters these previous constraints have been solved to a degree. There are numerous factors that must be taken into account. Not all people are suited to this technology genre ad the software does always deliver the results that users may anticipate. It is not always an “out of the box” solution. There are certain prerequisite skills and understandings as well as age considerations, ability to plan speak coherently and an ability to formulate ideas as well as the ability to read text. Many rehearse the text to be “learnt” by the software over a period of minutes, hours and sometimes even many sessions over days. Some of these issues can be circumvented or overcome. These important issues must at least be realised, considered and tackled. Naïve users in the past have given this technology a poor name. Mitigating circumstances were often the major cause, with poor research. Minimal preparation, sub-standard equipment and a lack of understanding and appreciation of how the technology performs in certain conditions and the poor assessment of the candidate’s ability to learn to control and access the software all contributed to a frustrating experience. The software genre has matured over the years with current leading products now fulfilling promises made by vendors quite a few years ago. The speed, performance and memory constraints have largely been resolved and cost is no longer a major issues. Hardware, both desktop and portable computers (namely Notebooks and even Ultra Lights) can be purchased and configured to perform with more than satisfactory results for many users. Versions are available for MAC OS and MS Windows XP and Vista operating systems. Key Issues There are certainly impediments to successful application of SR. A great deal has been documented around the world, with some excellent material available in Australia. Many agencies provide services and support. People who have moderate to significant needs can find and secure support in each state and territory. Some issues may need to be resolved: • • • • • • • • • • • • The Australian accent has been an issue in the past – but this has been resolved in newer versions of SR software The number of different environments impact upon consistency integrity and noise Poorly configured computers, slow processors and minimal RAM memory issues need to be addressed Placement and use of headset, handheld, lapel or desktop microphone positioning requirements USB based microphones vs the older style analogue 3.5mm jack connectors The sound card technology and capability (separate card or integrated motherboard device) Young boys who train the software, and then experience a change when their ‘voice breaks’ require SR re-training The ability of the user to use consistent speech patterns The ability of the user to pronounce words consistently Breathing control Issues of fatigue Posture and body/head control • • • • • • Ergonomics, height of screen display, placement of the computer for visual amenity Capacity of the user to speak fluently and/or speak consistently over time The ability to learn, master and control voiced commands ad editing functions The ability and capacity to correct errors as SR is being used Periodically backing up voice files (to a memory stick or external hard drive/server) for data integrity The skills to transfer relevant and critical user data from one software version or computer to the next Performance of speech recognition systems The performance of speech recognition systems is usually specified in terms of accuracy and speed. Accuracy may be measured in terms of performance accuracy that is usually rated with word error rate (WER), whereas speed is measured with the real time factor. Other measures of accuracy include Single Word Error Rate (SWER) and Command Success Rate (CSR). Most speech recognition users would tend to agree that dictation machines could achieve very high performance in controlled conditions. There is some confusion, however, over the interchange ability of the terms “speech recognition” and “dictation”. Commercially available speaker-dependent dictation systems usually require only a short period of training (sometimes also called `enrolment’) and may successfully capture continuous speech with a large vocabulary at normal pace with a very high accuracy. Most commercial companies claim that recognition software can achieve between 98% to 99% accuracy if operated under optimal conditions. Optimal conditions usually assume that users: • • • Have speech characteristics which match the training data Can achieve proper speaker adaptation, and Work in a clean noise environment (e.g. quiet office or laboratory space). This explains why some users, especially those whose speech is heavily accented, might achieve recognition rates much lower than expected. Speech recognition in video has become a popular search technology used by several video search companies. Limited vocabulary systems, requiring no training, can recognize a small number of words (for instance, the ten digits) as spoken by most speakers. Such systems are popular for routing incoming phone calls to their destinations in large organizations. Section 12: Speech Recognition  85  Speech Recognition MS Windows Option Voice recognition has been a feature in both the Windows XP and Vista versions, yet most people are unaware that it is packaged in the standard operating system. These versions have some merit, and provide some opportunities but are really entry-level technologies. These inbuilt programs cater for users but are not necessarily a complete or total solution for everyone. They usually do not cater to certain disability groups or users with some learning disabilities. MS Windows based voice recognition is part of the Language Bar. The Speech option in the Control Panels in MS Windows XP, for example is used to access this technology. Windows Speech Recognition in Windows Vista allows users to interact with their computers by voice. It was designed for people who want to significantly limit their use of the mouse and keyboard while maintaining or increasing their overall productivity. Users dictate documents and emails in mainstream applications use voice commands to start and switch between applications, control the operating system and fill out forms on the Internet. It is a new feature in Windows Vista, built using the latest Microsoft speech technologies and it provides worthwhile recognition accuracy that improves with continued exposure and use as it adapts to the 86  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit user’s speaking style and vocabulary. Speech Recognition is available in English (U.S.), English (U.K.), German (Germany), French (France), Spanish (Spain), Japanese, Chinese (Traditional), and Chinese (Simplified). The speech recognition capabilities in Windows XP used with Office 2003 productivity software can enhance computing in such areas as gaming, data entry and text editing. Other software vendors are taking the speech recognition capabilities of a PC into new areas such as home automation and telephony. Speech recognition requires three elements with Windows XP Service Pack 1 installed, then Microsoft Speech Recognition Engine v5.0 and an application that will allow for speech input. Typical programs include MS Notepad, MS WordPad, Outlook Express, and other programs that come packaged with in Windows XP. There is no Speech Recognition Engine (SRE) built directly into the Windows XP operating system as such. Users have to install a compatible engine from one of two sources. • If individual users have Office XP, or one of these programs on a computer, then access to the SRE is most likely. • Another option is available for advanced users. The SRE is provided for free as part of the Microsoft Speech Software Development Kit 5.1. Microsoft provides no technical support for this software and it is not generally recommended for beginner or end users. The Speech Recognition is quite basic and elementary as compared to the fully featured programs offered in the market. It can be an interesting exercise for some users to experiment and ‘play’ with this technology. To all intent and purposes, to avoid disappointment and frustration, it is best to use a well-regarded program as it will provide far more accurate results and be easier to use and master. The MS Vista SR engine is superior to the XP option and offers more features and accuracy. It may suit some and be sufficiently enabling for some tasks. People with disabilities and impairments definitely need to consider more robust and long-term options and seek to secure more viable solutions in order to realise sustained results. Every user has different needs, abilities, and capabilities and he or she may require individual strategies, training and support. Time and practise are fundamental requirements, though. Section 12: Speech Recognition  87  Speech Recognition Speech Recognition Programs Commercial Speech Recognition Software: Dragon Naturally Speaking V10 www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/ Standard/Preferred/Professional www.edsoft.com.au/DNS www.spectronicsinoz.com/catalogue/22536 http://www.novitatech.org.au/product.asp?p=247&id=2492 http://www.voiceperfect.com/ and other dealers around Australia Support for Dragon Naturally Speaking is available from a number of disability support services, agencies and groups. It is best to locate expert users, companies and individuals who can guide and direct users to the most beneficial options. Speak-Q http://www.wordq.com/speakqenglish.html SpeakQ is plug-in software that enhances WordQ Version 2 with simple, speech-to-text functionality. At any time users have the choice of typing with the keyboard, using word prediction, or speaking straight into their text. Speech recognition and word prediction are integrated to enhance the effectiveness of each other. Users can train SpeakQ to recognize their speech using texts provided that match their reading level or educators and trainers, or users themselves can write their own training texts. Say-MAGic www.ngtvoice.com/products/software/tandt/say-magic/ www.spectronicsinoz.com/product/speakq www.novitatech.org.au/product.asp?p=247&id=1873 For some time it has been possible to talk to the computer using a natural voice while at the same time receiving speech feedback from it, allowing a blind person to control the computer without using the keyboard. But low vision users (or people with dyslexia and language challenges who need enhanced visual display support) have not been able to benefit from this technology. Linking Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance and MAGic from Freedom Scientific together, Say-MAGic provides a range of facilities for users of display management technology who wish to control the computer with the voice. 88  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit MacSpeech Dictate V1.5 www.macspeech.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=978 www.macsense.com.au/ and www.spectronicsinoz.com/product/macspeech-dictate MacSpeech Dictate is a speech recognition solution for the Macintosh. MacSpeech Dictate’s accuracy and capabilities make the ubiquitous MAC OS productive and intuitive to use. The program recognizes and understands 13 English language variations - nine with U.S. spelling and four with U.K. spelling. Freeware Speech Recognition Software MS Windows Speech Recogniser V5.1 Part of MS Windows XP Home and Professional Versions (with SP1) & Office XP MS Windows Vista SR Part of MS Windows Vista Versions Dspeech http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/ This uses the engine in the prevailing Windows version. It has limitations but it offers an interesting experience. Dspeech is also a Portable application on EduApps/AccessApps (www.eduapps.org ) DSpeech is a TTS (Text To Speech) program with integrated functionality of ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition). It is able to read aloud any typed text and it chooses the sentences to be pronounced, based upon the vocal answers of the user. CoolInfo 1.0 Voice Recognition www.coolsoftllc.com/coolinfo/register/ CoolInfo 1.0 Voice Recognition is a free speech recognition program distributed by CoolSoft, LLC. It lets users acquire information from the Internet by speech including news, weather, horoscopes and other websites of common interest. Users can search Google, Yahoo, eBay and MSN entirely by speech. Other features such as User Commands and Calculator allow users to create their own speech commands and use the MS Windows Calculator with speech commands. To make it possible for CoolInfo Voice Recognition to provide it freely, CoolInfo displays a banner space, speaks messages from sponsors and requires registration (which is also free). It offers another ‘interesting experience’. SpeechVibe V2.0.3 www.tucows.com/preview/510373#MoreInfo It offers universal mouse-control through automated hot spots and a mouse-grid to perform more complex operations such as drag-and-drops. Further allows dictation anywhere with formatting flexibility and a quick alternate replacement user-experience. It also includes text-to-speech, application launching voice commands and a speech-enabled Internet browser page invocation environment. It is Shareware, so users can try it before they commit any money. Resources Portable Solutions A practical Fact Sheet can be located at http://www.adcet.edu.au/Oao/ view.aspx?id=3912 on the ADCET site. Some more practical advice is available at http://www.talking.co.uk/spee.htm and a well-written article on DNS is also at http://www.talking.co.uk/nspf.htm (although the choice of colours used on this site are quite unusual)! Versions 9 and 10 on DNS provide users with the capability of recording voice into Digital Voice Recorders and importing text into the program for speech recognition outcomes. The Preferred and Pro version of this software can be used with various models of handheld or digital voice recorders (DVR). Some models work far better than others, and advice should be sought before purchase. The quality of sound varies as does the internal memory storage, the overall operation, battery life and controls. Cost is an indicator but size, dimensions weight and particularly the appropriate functions and features that will be required will have significant bearing. Once again, research and choosing a device carefully will result in successful speech recognition. Most dealers will provide a list of their preferred models that have proven to work well with the matching DNS software versions. Universal Access using Speech Recognition Software Being able to speak to a computer is liberating for many students. The ability to use SR well, though, can be a complicated and frustrating experience though if it is hurriedly introduced, without proper research. Once skills and understandings are established and the computer system configured to maximise for performance, the results can be life changing. It is not a technology for everyone and it does not necessarily cater to everyone’s needs. There are many factors to consider. An interesting article in 2008 on DNS V10 Preferred: http://www.zdnet. com.au/reviews/software/applications/soa/Dragon-NaturallySpeaking10-Preferred/0,2000065797,339291627,00.htm. Thirteen useful FAQs on DNS V10 at http://www.spectronicsinoz. com/library/dragon-naturallyspeaking-faqs and seventeen videos at http://www.spectronicsinoz.com/product/dragon-naturallyspeakingpreferred-10 are great resources. Read a PDF article at the following web address on Voice Recognition software as it has some interesting information: www.abilitynet.org.uk/content/factsheets/pdfs/Voice%20 Recognition%20Software%20-%20An%20Introduction.pdf Some ‘Tips and Tricks’ for DNS software: http://www.nuance.com/ naturallyspeaking/customer-portal/tips-tricks.asp whilst a Voice Recognition Forum offers some more insights at http://forums. voicerecognition.net.au/. NB: It was interesting to ‘Google’ Dragon Naturally Speaking – as there were 1,9200,00 hits and for Voice Recognition, 20,000,00 and Speech Recognition 5,680,000. Microphones are critically important. It is better to purchase a high quality, well-regarded USB model straight away if the user is going to require speech recognition as a long-term solution. Placement, positioning and care of the device will provide better results than an inexpensive model that is not looked after or ‘knocked about’. Note: This is by no means a definitive article on speech recognition; it is merely an overview and introduction to the many facets and intricacies of an extremely powerful software genre. The prevalence and significance of SR is gathering momentum and the quantum leaps the IT industry in the delivery of lower cost, more efficient computer power, speed and memory performance are all contributing to more robust systems that, in time, will deliver increased performance and reliability. It is quickly becoming a mainstream solution and companies are promoting it as a viable if not more practical input method than the keyboard and mouse. When accommodating people with difference, though, great care is required to research all available options. Choosing and acquiring a suitable program and setting up the system, with support advice from people who know the technology well, will be key to successful introduction and implantation. Some students may need direction and assistance from Speech Pathologists or other practitioners as well. Section 12: Speech Recognition  89  SECTION13 Section 13 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit Literacy Support for ESL Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 13: Literacy Support For ESL students  91  In this section Literacy Support for ESL Other specific TTS programs such as TextAloud and Natural Reader V9 commercial versions will contain a few SAPI 5 voices with others being optional purchases. Introduction Text to Speech Programs There are numerous companies who create, compile and supply synthetic computer voices to these companies and to the public. Balabolka V1.3, a free TTS program from Russia (http://www. cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm) enables the user to download and install up to 13 extra voices that are SAPI 4based. The installed voices are predominantly English and Spanish with about 29 options of varying qualities. Interface translation in other languages Text Translation Online Text Translation Introduction Individuals living or studying in Australia who are blind or are vision impaired may also be enrolled in ESL classes. They might learn English more quickly, confidently and efficiently if their preferred or more proficient language of their parents or careers is also gainfully employed and utilised. Other ESL individuals may require or need to have access to a range of technologies to assist them in accessing and learning English. Text to Speech Programs There are numerous TTS programs that offer support for other languages (e.g. Balabolka, ReadPlease 2003 and DSpeech) as well as commercial applications (Texthelp Read & Write, ClaroRead). Software programs such as BoardMaker 5, 6 and Plus have multiple language support for symbol use whilst programs such as Lingoes will translate text using web resources. Online web resources can also be used for translation or for speaking translated text e.g. http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speechinteractive-demo.html. Text to Speech programs provide the basic SAPI 4* voices (Mary, Mike and Sam) with the higher quality human sounding SAPI 5 voices (e.g. Karen and Lee are the popular providing Australian voices). These current TTS technologies are usually packaged with commercial programs (including literacy support applications such as Read & Write, ClaroRead, Kurzweil, the communications and symbol based BoardMaker V6, writing tool and onscreen grid program Clicker 5 and brainstorming and mind mapping Kidspiration V3 and Inspiration V8). 92  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit The additional TTS voice technologies it promotes are the free Lernout and Hauspie TruVoice engines, including: • Japanese (3 MB) • American English (1 MB) • Korean (3 MB) • British English (2.5 MB) • Portuguese (Brazil) (2.4 MB) • Dutch (2.6 MB) • Russian (2.9 MB) • French (2.2 MB) • Spanish (2.4 MB) • German (2.2 MB) • Italian (2 MB) The SAPI 5 voices that are available include the following Microsoft voices that are English based: • British English (19.4 MB) • French (22.5 MB) • German (20.7 MB) • Italian (21.5 MB) • Spanish (21.7 MB) For users who require a Ukrainian voice, they can download and install the Ukrainian voice UkrVox Igor: To use SAPI 4 voices, download and install the re-distributable Microsoft Speech API file http://download.microsoft.com/download/ speechSDK/Install/4.0a/WIN98/EN-US/spchapi.EXE (827 KB). Also, you may download and install the Microsoft Speech Control Panel http:// download.microsoft.com/download/c/9/e/c9ee5f5d-7631-4ee7-aee4dbd22b2b1439/SpchCpl.exe (928 KB); the Speech Control Panel will add an icon to your Control Panel to enable you to list the compatible text-to-speech engines installed on your system and customize their settings for your use. Balabolka can use language modules from Microsoft Office 97/2000 for spell checking. If Microsoft Office is not installed on the host computer, or the user has another version of Microsoft Office, he or she can download spell-checking components from the Balabolka web site: • Bulgarian • German • Romanian • Catalan • Greek • Russian • Croatian • Hungarian • Serbian • Czech • Italian • Slovak • Danish • Latvian • Slovenian • English • Lithuanian • Spanish • Estonian • Norwegian • Swedish • Finnish • Polish • French • Portuguese Balabolka can use Hunspell (http://hunspell.sourceforge.net). Hunspell is the default spell checker of OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox. Spell checker dictionaries for Windows: • • • • • • • • • Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian • • • • • • • • • French German Greek Hebrew Hungarian Italian Latvian Lithuanian Norwegian • • • • • • • • • Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Ukrainian Also the program supports GNU Aspell (http://aspell.net). GNU Aspell is a Free and Open Source spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell. It can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker. High quality commercial voices can be acquired and purchased from the following companies: • • • • • • • • • NextUp.com - SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 voices - http://nextup.com/ TextAloud/SpeechEngine/voices.html Acapela Group - http://www.acapela-group.com/ AT&T Natural Voices - http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/ Cepstral -http://www.cepstral.com/ Loquendo - http://www.loquendo.com/en/ NeoSpeech - http://www.neospeech.com/ Nuance - http://www.nuance.com/ SVOX - http://www.svox.com/ IVONA - http://www.ivona.com/ Section 13: Literacy Support For ESL students  93  Literacy Support for ESL The free version of ReadPlease 2003 (www.readplease.com) provides a range of free voices that are AT&T technologies. These will work with the free version of Readplease 2003 or the commercial Readplease Plus versions. To install these extra voices, the user needs to download one or more options from the links below and follow the instructions. Please make a note that these voices are only compatible with ReadPlease 2003 and ReadPlease PLUS 2003. TTS engine with 2 L&H British English voices (Male & Female) http://www.readplease.com/downloads/msvoiceengines/lhttseng.exe TTS engine with 2 L&H Dutch voices (Male & Female) http://www.readplease.com/downloads/msvoiceengines/lhttsdun.exe TTS engine with 2 L&H French voices (Male & Female) http://www.readplease.com/downloads/msvoiceengines/lhttsfrf.exe TTS engine with 2 L&H German voices (Male & Female) http://www.readplease.com/downloads/msvoiceengines/lhttsged.exe TTS engine with 2 L&H Italian voices (Male & Female) http://www.readplease.com/downloads/msvoiceengines/lhttsiti.exe TTS engine with 2 L&H Portuguese voices (Male & Female) http://www.readplease.com/downloads/msvoiceengines/lhttsptb.exe TTS engine with 2 L&H Spanish voices (Male & Female) http://www.readplease.com/downloads/msvoiceengines/lhttsspe.exe The free version of ReadPlease 2003 runs in a smaller window. This is the major disadvantage of the program for some users. It is simple and intuitive to learn and use with some excellent features. Natural Reader V9 (http://www.naturalreaders.com/) is another TTS program. It has some excellent features, including the capacity to run as a ‘Mini Bar’. This floating toolbar appearance enables users of all abilities to listen to any text that can be selected in the operating system or from any program. Once installed, it only offers the computer sounding ‘Mary’ voice, but it will locate other SAPI voices, if they are installed on the user’s computer (e.g. Karen and Lee). If the commercial versions are purchased, the user acquires 2 or 4 high quality voices – albeit in English. Dspeech http://www.dimio.altervista.org/eng/ Dspeech is a free Italian TTS program that provides a range of powerful features at no cost to the user . It is a fully installable Windows program as well as a portable app (as is Balabolka). It allows users to save the text to an output file - as a .WAV, .MP3 or OGG file. Users can select different voices, even combine them, or juxtapose them in order to create dialogues between different voices. DSpeech integrates a vocal recognition system that, through a simple script language, allows users to create interactive dialogues with the user. Students and teachers can dynamically change the features of the voices during the playback (speed, volume and frequency), to insert pauses, emphasize specific words, or even to spell them out. 94  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit Contents of the Clipboard can be captured and DSpeech is compatible with all vocal engines (SAPI 4-5 compliant). Users can configure the voices in an independent way as well. SAPI5 voices can be used within Dspeech and offer the best quality, but unfortunately they are not often distributed for free. The most famous are Cepstral http://www.cepstral.com/, Acapela, Loquendo, RealSpeak and Voiceware. RealSpeak: They are good voices and it seems that Microsoft will integrate them by default on Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. • British English http://rapidshare.com/files/108336122/RSSolo4UKEnglishEmily. exe.html • Italian http://rapidshare.de/files/40487223/ScanSoft_RealSpeak_Solo_ v4_Ita__Silvia_.exe.html • Spanish http://rapidshare.com/files/108333752/RSSolo4SpanishIsabel. exe.html • French http://rapidshare.com/files/108331417/Virginie.exe.html • German http://rapidshare.de/files/38983475/RSSolo4German.zip.html eSpeak: It’s a new open source engine in English (good) and in other languages (average). Multilanguage - http://espeak.sourceforge.net/ SAPI4 voices, instead, have poor quality but are easier to find, and downloadable for free; the best are the ones listed in Balabolka. The L&H TruVoice offers reasonable voice sampling, but for .wav and MP3 conversions, they are very slow. Interface translation in other languages The DSpeech interface can be translated in several languages: Italian (By Talksina & Marco Tettamanti) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=10 Spanish (By Ricardo Abad & Esteban Mello) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=11 Spanish Valencian (By Ricardo Abad) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=12 Spanish Catalan (By Josep Rullo Batalla) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=28 French (Jean-Paul DAVIN) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=13 German (By Björn Gott) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=14 Portuguese (By Ângelo Miguel) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=15 Brazilian Portuguese (By Antonio Cezar Locutor and Abel P. do Nascimento Jr.) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=16 Latin American Spanish (By Rafael Lopez Jr.) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=17 Japanese (By Philip Deane) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=18 Mike (US English) Crystal (US English) Julia (US English) Mel (US English) Ray (US English) Charles (UK English) Audrey (UK English) Anjali (Indian English) Alberto (LA Spanish) Rosa (LA Spanish) Reiner (German) Klara (German) Alain (French) Juliette (French) Arnaud (Can French) Heather (US English) Ryan (US English) Peter (UK English) Graham (UK English) Lucy (UK English) Salma (Arabic) Youssef (Arabic) Femke (Dutch) Bruno (French) Julie (French) Sarah (German) Chiara (Italian) Kari (Norwegian) Maria (Spanish) Emma (Swedish) Chinese (CHT) (By Hong Kong Blind Union) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=19 Czech Republic (By Janusz Chmiel) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=20 Romanian (By Irina Popovici) http://dimio.altervista.org/stats/download.php?id=37 TextAloud (http://www.nextup.com/) TextAloud can be used as a standalone program but I also use the facilities of it’s TTS in my email program (Microsoft Outlook) and whilst browsing in Internet Explorer. TextAloud is Text to Speech software that converts your text from MS Word Documents, emails, web pages and PDF Files into natural-sounding speech. Users can listen on their PCs or create audio files for use on portable devices such as iPods phones and iPod Touch models (including the new to be released iPads) Pocket PCs, Palm PDAs and CD players. TextAloud even has automatic iTunes/ iPod syncing. Numerous voice choices can be made and it is an extensive list. Users can check out more voices if they are not shown in the following table. Jennifer (US English) Samantha (US Eng) Daniel (UK English) Karen (AU English) Mei-Ling (Chinese) Sin-Ji (Cantonese) Sebastian (French) Yannick (German) Alexandros (Greek) Sylvia (Italian) Sangeeta (Ind Eng) Kyoko (Japanese) Narae (Korean) Raquel (Portuguese) Katarina (Russian) Callie (US English) David (US English) Diane (US English) Lawrence (UK Eng) Millie (UK English) Robin (Eng Child) Amy (US English) Emily (US English) Walter (US English) Isabelle (Can French) Jean-Pierre (Can Fr) Katrin (German) Marta (Spanish) Miguel (Spanish) Duncan (Scottish) Section 13: Literacy Support For ESL students  95  Literacy Support for ESL Often, a ‘quick and dirty’ way to have text spoken in another language is to use online resources. The Acapela site provides an option whereby the student or educator types in some text, chooses a preferred language from a drop down list-box, and the English text is voiced immediately (or with a small time lag). http://www.acapela-group.com/ text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html Text Translation Programs such the free to download Lingoes (http://www.lingoes.net/ en/index.html) provide a number of key features that will prove useful. There is also a portable version. Online Text Translation There are a number of sites that provide options for text translation. FreeTranslation is a quick way to type some text and have it immediately translated (be careful though, as not all of these engines are 100% accurate!) http://www.freetranslation.com/ Yahoo7 Babel Fish allows a user to type up to 150 words from one language to another (not just English to a another language). http:// au.babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt. Users an also have a web page translated. It also caters to parents who require English translation of documents online, or from English text into their native tongue. Lingoes are an easy and intuitive dictionary and text translation software program. It offers lookup dictionaries, full text translation, capture word onscreen; it translates selected text and pronunciation of words in over 80 languages. These languages include English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Greek, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Arabic, Hebrew, Vietnamese and Thai. Key features include: • Cross translation over 80 languages • Full text translation over 42 languages • Ctrl + Right mouse button key for the cursor translation • Zoned word translation • Clipboard text capture • Words and Texts Pronunciation • Free dictionaries and thesauruses • Online dictionaries and WikiPedia access Babylon 8 is a commercial program with a free download trial version available, features include: • Easy to use - translate with just one click of a mouse • Translation to and from 75 languages • Full Web page translation • Full document translation (Word, PDF, Text) • Integrates seamlessly into Microsoft office Spellers • Leading Dictionary Packs - Britannica, OXFORD and WikiPedia 96  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit There are more technology options for ESL students (e.g. hand held translating devices from Franklins http://www.franklinelectronics.com. au/ but these are predominantly free and easy to use for educators & students! * Note: The acronym SAPI = Microsoft Speech Application Programming Interface SECTION14 Section 14 Assistive technology - Employer Resource Kit AccessApps Author: Gerry Kennedy © 2009 - ICT Consultancy Email: [email protected] Ph: 03 9894 4826 Mob: 0411 569 840 Section 14: AccessApps  97  In this section AccessApps Implications and Benefits How do I get it? Installation instructions Is it possible to install other applications to AccessApps? AccessApps The freely downloadable of AccessApps is an initiative developed by the Scottish JISC Regional Support Centres. It consists of over 50 open source and freeware assistive technology applications that can be entirely used from a USB stick on an MS Windows computer. This means AccessApps will run without needing to install any software or utility application on a host computer. A wide range of e-learning solutions that support writing, reading and planning as well as visual and mobility difficulties are provided – and you can add additional portable applications to AccessApps, if and when required. The number of these handy free applications is growing steadily. Implications and Benefits Individuals can use these portable applications on any computing resource in workplace or at home. The larger AccessApps solution requires a 2GB memory thumb drive or memory stick. I would recommend a 4GB drive though, as users can add more portable apps as well as documents, videos and photos. Folders are provided for files and documents in handy, easy to find and access folders. Users have the opportunity to have a number of useful Inclusive or Assistive Technologies anywhere, anytime. 98  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit The advantages of having AccessApps: • No need for technical support in the workplace • No permissions required for installing assistive technologies onto a local computer or server • Independent use, independent tools - anywhere, anytime • Independent set up, configuration and preferences in each App for each user • Ability to add more portable apps to cater to individual interests or needs • Low cost solution (approximately $20-$25 for a 4GB USB2 memory drive/stick) • Provides increased independence • USB drive technology is accepted and used universally already • Ability to add and save MP3, Podcasts, graphics, photos and other documents on the drive • Ideal for older PCs and Eee PC style and ultra portable computers that have minimal or restricted hard disk space As long as workplaces have the proper virus protection and mechanisms in place to avoid malicious files from entering their intranets, servers and IT systems, then AccessApps should be allowed. The applications run completely from the external thumb drive and will not compromise the integrity of the system(s) used. It is time and cost effective as the software, once downloaded and installed onto a thumb drive, is immediately useful. No time lag for tech support testing, permissions, installation and configuration! How do I get it? Individual learning support needs dictate the type of software solution required by a user. The download section allows you to choose the portable applications which best suit your individual needs and download them in a single application suite. There are a few versions – the full AccessApps and a lite version (for 1GB or 512MB drives) or a “pick and mix” option where you choose the apps that you need. Further information about using AccessApps can be found on the AccessApps - Help page.  http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/ accessapps/help.php You can access Help files and directions about all of this material as well. There are video guides and tutorials to help you from A-B. Videos include: • Watch - Downloading a pre-packaged version of AccessApps • Watch - Downloading a ‘Pick n Mix’ version of AccessApps • Watch - Extracting installation files for AccessApps • Watch - Starting AccessApps for the first time There are Step-by-step introductory guides (in alternative formats) that you can download. These include: MS Word format, Open Writer (i.e. Open Office Org word processor), Adobe PDF format, in large print, in MP3 format and in DTB format. AccessApps - Installation instructions Favourites Click here to download AccessApps A colleague in South Australia at SERU, Jim Sprialis and I have been experimenting and using some of these apps for the past 3-4 weeks. Our favourites seem to be similar and we have been enthusiastically trialing them. To install AccessApps to your portable USB stick: 1. Download the required version of the AccessApps to your desktop by right click the link ( above) and choose ‘Save Target As’ or ‘Save Link As’. 2. Unzip the downloaded file by right clicking on the file and select ‘Extract All’ to your desktop (preferably to a named folder) or to a location of your choice (e.g. a folder on a server or shared drive for use by others). 3. Copy the extracted files to the root directory of your USB stick (the root directory is the first or top-most directory in a hierarchy). Note: I would always use a fresh, new USB drive so that the new folders and AccessApps program are clearly evident and not compromised by being ‘lost’ with other files and documents. 4. You can immediately start using AccessApps by double clicking on ‘Start AccessApps’. 5. This will put the AccessApps icon in the Windows system tray, usually found at the bottom right-hand side of your screen 6. This is what it will look like. 7. Click on the ‘aA’ icon in the system tray to activate the AccessApps Start Menu. You can choose which application to launch from the list on the left-hand-side. 8. You can save documents into the ‘Documents’, ‘Music” ‘Pictures’ and ‘Video” folders if you wish. Note: Remember to quit all programs after use. 9. Then exit the AccessApps program suite (i.e. remove the “aA” icon from the systems tray area. 10. THEN remember to dismount the memory drive correctly. Note: A table with all of the current applications is available at: http:// www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/compare.php (as at 12th November 2009). TopOCR – a very powerful and flexible OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program, Dspeech - a text-to-speech with the facility to save to audio format – including MP3 Scribus (desktop publishing) Open Office Org – an MS Office substitute with many similar functions – and a few more (save to PDF) PowerReader – caters to users who have dyslexia or others who struggle with literacy and reading AMIS Daisy Reader a very useful Daisy Reader program – to read Daisy books Freemind – a mind mapping and brainstorming program The Sage – a comprehensive thesaurus and word building/finding program (as good as Wordweb) TypeFaster – an interesting typing tutor that caters to a wide range of users Click ‘n Type – an old favourite – a virtual onscreen keyboard with many options - with word prediction Audacity – a music editing program - ideal for editing Podcasts, MP3 voice and music files ...and many, many more! Jim has also located quite a few other applications that can be used straight from a memory stick or added to AccessApps (see sites listed below). Some are business apps or ones catering to programmers, but they might suit older users! We are both fully convinced that this may be the way to accommodate users who struggle. The advent and further deployment to web based applications is progressing. It implies though, that users have universal, amendable, safe, affordable and secure access to web sites. Section 14: AccessApps  99  AccessApps Is it possible to install other applications to AccessApps? The application has to have a portable version available (I have provided links to some sites at the end of this article). You can usually find these using your preferred search engine using the keyword ‘portable’ followed by the application you would like to add. Or you can Google “portable Apps”. Below are instructions (from the RSC web site) for adding your own applications to the AccessApps menu: 1. Download a portable version of the application you would like to add. 2. Install/extract the downloaded file to the ‘Applications’ folder of your USB memory stick. 3. Open the AccessApps menu by clicking the AccessApps icon in the systems tray. 4. Click on a button labelled ‘ASuite’ (right hand side towards the top). You should see the menu structure of all the installed applications 5. Right click on the folder you would like to add your application to and select ‘Add software’ 6. In the ‘Properties’ dialog window which opens click on ‘Browse’. 7. Navigate to the folder of the application you are adding and double click on the file used to launch that application. It is usually the *.exe file (i.e. an executable file). 8. This should take you back to the Properties dialog. Click on ‘Retrieve’, which should populate the fields with the program information (if not - fill in the fields as appropriate). Then click OK. 9. When you click on the AccessApps icon in the system tray you should now see your new application listed in the menu. Other Web links to applications that have portable version for free download: • http://www.portablefreeware.com/  • http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/portable-software-usb/ • http://www.app-stick.com/ • http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-portable-programs. htm • http://www.softpedia.com/get/portable-software Note: All of the above technical information was sourced from the RSC website: http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/ as at 13th November 2008. An updated version will be available soon. MAC OS: AccessApps currently does not work on MAC OS but some of the programs available do have portable apps versions for MAC OS (e.g. Scribus) – and there are others, too. The RSC blog is a great reference for support, ideas and to dismiss dubious/ erroneous claims: http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/blogs.php 100  Assistive Technology - Employer Resource Kit