ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

October has been an incredibly busy month for me and so my blog posts have slowed down. Between presentations, workshops, and teaching my days have been full. Of course there is always time for new technologies and just last week my iPhone 4S arrived on the scene. It is an incredible device and with the large number of apps it is overwhelming-even for me.

Setting up the iPhone was quick and easy to do, and once I connected it to my Google account, my contacts and schedule came streaming in. Talk about smooth integration. As much I will become wedded to my iPhone 4S, thinking about the whole category of smartphones for students with disabilities is really intriguing. Just last week I did a demo of Siri, Apple's integrated assistant for my graduate students and was thinking about all of the applications for students that we work with executive functioning disorder. With Siri it is possible to create Reminders easily using your voice as well as enter Events directly into the calendar. Apple has once again taken the initiative to build a speech recognition engine into the iPhone 4S which allows users to use natural language to control certain aspects of the phone. I'm sure over time new functionality will be added that will even take the Siri technology even further. In fact, Apple has integrated speech recognition into all aspects of the iOS 5 which I have found works really great. Simply click on the microphone which is located on the onscreen keyboard and start dictating. You will find the speech recognition to be highly accurate and a great tool for instant messaging and for composing emails. Have to run but look for more posts about using the iPhone with your students with Executive Functioning Disorder- coming soon!