Need a quick audio document for a student?

Do you or your school not have access to text-to-speech software? Robobraille is very quick on short document conversions most of the time. Robobraille is really fast. You can get an accessible file in just minutes. I sent a file of 12 pages today and got the MP3 back in 7 minutes. Your time will vary based on server traffic.

It is free for non-commercial users (that's you; teachers, students, and parents), send the document you want converted to usspeech@robobraille.org, for MP3 audio. Make sure to read the instructions, there are many ways to tweak files to fit you, the files audio speed for example

A way to read dollar bills

I had a parent join me at lunch the other day. She shared with me that her high school student had problems telling dollar bills apart, both when shopping with her parents and when out on school community outings. I was aware of the vision difficulties she had from having met her.
As much as I like technology, I'm not one who introduces it for the sake of doing so. It always has to do with the functions that need support, and the "goodness of fit" for the individual.
I had read about in another Blog (Thank you Ron) about a bill reader the iBill talking banknote identifier from Orbit Research

"The iBill is built on a key-fob design, measuring only 3.0 x 1.6 x 0.7 inches and weighs 1.5 oz. It runs on a single AAA battery which should last more than a year, according to Orbit Research. The unit should be easy enough to operate as it has only two buttons. And, the brochure claims most bills are recognized in less than 1 second, with an accuracy rate of better than 99.9%."

I had already been looking at it for another student and In collaboration with the parents (Thank you, parents). I ordered one (its only $99).

The very successful outcome of adding this tool to the students activities was easy to measure.

Worksheet for teaching money

Carl, recently shared a web site http://www.moneyinstructor.com/ that teachers use for teaching practical things about money. This is a very good resource. There is a limited free version and a more involved version, you pay a fee for.

I'm sure you are asking what does this have to do with using technology. I was a given a worksheet from the site to see if I could set up in larger type and better space for a student with visual perception issues, and I could! It was simply a matter of saving the worksheet web site to my desktop and slightly reformatting it. This really impressed me and I signed up on the website straight away.

I was then asked to look at another sheet to see it it could be read in a screenreader. Using the prior worksheet I had reformatted I could make it work a number of the most common and popular screen readers. Thanks Carl for sharing this one, and thank the parents who asked me to "see what I could do" with this one.

Browser for children with autism

I had the opportunity last year to share with Carl. A browser designed for children with autism http://www.zacbrowser.com/
It is available to anyone for free.

I use assistive technology in my life everyday. If you do too, can you share those experiences here to help others? Do you write windows script or mac automators that make things more accessible for you? Please share it here!

Thank you Shawn for sharing this with me, so I could share it with Carl and many others and add to the AT world.

Alternative Text Formats

I am regularly surprised by how little, most K-12 educators know about alternative texts. Having said that though I’m very gratified about how open they are to the idea I have called many text book publishers only to learn that, not only did they have an alternative text (mostly on CD), but the given school district was licensed for it. School librarians are wonderful about providing these formats once they know they can. For a student who learns auditory you get a positive result for both the student and instructor very quickly. Educators call your text publishers!