Hi All,

I have a student who types with the side of his hands, it is amazing and he is very accurate in his typing skills. So I agree using all fingers is not the only way and it is about muscle memory.

I also have students that use Dragon Dictate(V2T) but some get really frustrated. However I find this is the only programme that lets you dictate longer pieces into a document some of the others mean lots of copying and pasting in to documents. Please correct me if I am wrong as I have a few students that might benefit.

Thanks in advance for any further advice.

Best wishes,

Donna

Thank you so much for this information. The CYP I will be working with are quite varied,  so I think it'll be a case of finding the best fit for each one. This has certainly given me a lot to think about!

Hi Donna,

Here are some links that you might find helpful.

Dragon is no longer the go-to as V-2-T is available on all operating systems and no longer needs to be trained! I use it for texts , notes and lists etc. on my android phone, with great success.

I am sure you will already know that CALL Scotland is a great resource generally, but the downloads are particularly useful at: www.callscotland.org.uk/downloads  

Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Word 16 both of which feature a Dictation (Speech to Text) and a reader. Immersive Reader is available on Microsoft 365 (Learning Tools addon)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/education/educators/personalized-learning/default.aspx

 The following link illustrates which Microsoft software has these accessible features:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/products/learning-tools/default.aspx

Microsoft Learning Tools Availability link as follows: 

https://twitter.com/mtholfsen/status/1029164894975741952

Google Docs has accessibility features that include the Read&Write extension (free for teachers) as optional addon. This includes predictive text, speech-to-text and a text reader in this feature

Read&Write:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhUXXBrXWOc

This G Suite Learning Center webpage provides support for Google Docs:

https://gsuite.google.com/learning-center/tips/docs/#!/

www.abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/z-google-accessibility?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Accessibility-Newsletter-March-2019&dm_i=3SCI,J3BY,54JD2U,22CTH,1

Thank you Gillian,

very helpful to know.

Best wishes,

Donna