ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

I guess patience is a real virtue especially when it comes to developing apps for Apple's IOS devices. In the case of the Co:Writer App for IOS from Don Johnston, Inc, the wait was certainly worth it.  Co:Writer for Mac and PC has become to large degree the standard in the assistive technology field for word prediction. I can remember when I first saw Co:Writer for the first time I was floored just how good the prediction algorithms were. It had the uncanny ability to feel like it was reading my Co:Writer for IOS comes complete with a large library of built-in Topic Dictionaries, what happens when the student is writing for example a current events paper on the Civil War in Syria? Not a problem, Co:Writer for IOS can go out to the web and create a Scraped Topic Dictionary on the fly. Wow that is some powerful feature!

Co:Writer for iPad

mind as I demonstrated it on the computer. But what could we come to expect from Co:Writer on an IOS device? With a long history of being the standard by which all word prediction applications are measured could it really provide students with the level of support that they would need? I have to tell you that since its release a couple of weeks ago, Co:Writer lives up to its reputation and then some. I am really floored to watch Co:Writer run on the iPad as elegantly as it does never missing a beat. The word prediction is top rate even when students spell phonetically or leave out vowels. The killer feature as far as I am concerned are Topic Dictionaries and Scraped Topic Dictionaries. Those of us who have used Co:Writer are well aware of Topic Dictionaries that are included with Co:Writer on the Mac or PC and how well they can support students when they are writing a specific topic. Sometimes we forget what a difference it can make when a student is writing when we can provide theme with all those technical and topical words they will need to access. While 

As you would expect you can customize Co:Writer for IOS by determining the base number of words that Co:Writer should access which would depend on the students vocabulary and grade level. You can also set the Text to Speech feature to read letters, words, or sentences and set the rate of the speech. You currently can utilize five different fonts and change the size of the text and utilize a high contrast feature, black background white text. While Co:Writer makes it easy to get your ideas down on the iPad-it also gives you lots of options when it comes time for sharing your ideas. You can send the text to iMessage, Facebook, Twitter or Email. Better yet you can save it to your Dropbox or Google Drive account for easy access at home or in school. You can also copy. paste and print the text directly from the app. Don Johnston, Inc recently added iCloud support which will now sync your files across multiple devices which is a great feature. Co:Writer for IOS also supports external Bluetooth keyboards and will work on the iPhone. For students who need spelling support, having access to Co:Writer on IOS will be a dream come true for them.

To get a feel for Co:Writer for IOS please watch the screencast.

It is really exciting to see the traditional publishers of assistive technology jumping into the app marketplace and providing end users with powerful new apps that pack a lot of features. I had the good fortune to be able to review iReadWrite from TextHelp, Inc. which was recently released and am very impressed with the feature set. This is TextHelp's first foray into the iPad marketplace but they have been long standing publishers of Read Write Gold on the Windows/Mac platform and have a great deal of experience providing students with assistive technology supports.

iReadWrite is a well designed app that works as advertised.  It provides students with text-to-speech , word prediction and vocabulary support. iReadWrite does not require an internet connection to utilize the program which is ideal for students who may be in schools with poor web connectivity. At the time of this writing iReadWrite can open rtf. and txt. files. Students will quickly grasp how to use the word prediction feature which is a real strength of the program. I have worked with some students who have dropped out vowels and iReadWrite was still able to predict the word. iReadWrite has one of the most powerful word prediction features that I have seen to date for iPad apps. However, I would like to see some way for students to be able select the predicted word from the list, when they are using a Bluetooth keyboard. Perhaps having the first ten word numbered that can be entered via a number key from the keyboard could work. Utilizing the Swipe feature students will be able to quickly enter the words into the writing area. If a student is unsure of which word to use- they can hold their finger down and up pops the definition with a picture support. This vocabulary feature is well designed and implemented and will be very helpful for students when they are writing. In addition to spell checking, iReadWrite also does homonym checking and will look for those confusable words that students often use which are incorrect. This feature is easy to use and students will quickly see which words were flagged as iReadWrite changes the font to Blue. When students have completed their written work they can export the text to: Mail. Message, Twitter, and Facebook. They can also copy the text and paste it into another app if they prefer. It would be nice to be able to Print directly from iReadWrite, but maybe that is a feature for a future upgrade. Short of some minor feature requests, iReadWrite provides students with a robust set of tools that will help them in the area of reading and writing. TextHelp, Inc has done a tremendous job of creating an app that is both powerful and full featured for the iOS platform and educators need to include this in their AT Toolkit when making recommendations.

I have included a screencast that takes a quick tour around iReadWrite:

You can read my original review of Clicker Docs, which adds considerable writing supports for students that need word prediction, text to speech, and talking word wall support. Since my review, Crick Software has released an update to the app which adds some powerful new features. The latest version of Clicker Docs now supports external Bluetooth keyboards, Dropbox, as well as spell checking. While the word prediction feature was well implemented in Clicker Docs- it is now more powerful in that any word that is included in the grid automatically comes to the top of the prediction list when a student is typing. So for example if the student was writing about the rainforest and you had created a grid that included the following words: canopy, orangutan, understory, sloth, opossum, emergent layer, forest floor, etc.- these words would automatically come up to the top of list as the student was typing and could be selected from the prediction bar. You can see from the screen shot above the list of words and in the screen shot to the right-see how the word prediction engine suggested the word "orangutan" in the list. This is a very powerful feature and will allow teachers to build customized grids on specific topics so that students are better supported when they are doing writing a particular topic. Clicker Docs also added a feature called Show Touches which is great for those of us who are doing training, it adds a small yellow highlighted circle whenever you touch the screen at that location. Likewise, Clicker Docs now supports Dropbox which will be fully integrated with the desktop version of Clicker 6. If you have downloaded Clicker Docs to you iPad make sure that you update your version so that you can take advantage of these new features.

While doing some searches for new writing software a couple of months ago, I came across a rather interesting web site from Ginger Software. The company was tauting a new software application called Ginger Spell that works within Microsoft Word to provide students with writing disabilities support in the area of spelling and grammar. At the present time Ginger Spell beta does not include grammar support but will be added when the applications ships. Ginger Spell is unique in that it assist students in producing error free text right within Microsoft Word using very sophisticated algorithms. Ginger Spell installs within Microsoft Word 2003 and Word 2007 and provides a window that allows students to view the suggested corrections. As much as I am a big fan of word prediction there are a number of students with writing disabilities that do not do well with the tool- here is where Ginger Spell comes in. Students can write within Microsoft Word as they always do and once they are done can utilize the power of Ginger Spell to process their writing. Ginger Spell has the uncanny ability to make the right correction and produce an error free finished product- which is ideal for students with writing disabilities. I have had a chance to beta test Ginger Spell and am very impressed with the underlying technology. To use Ginger Spell you will need to be running Windows and have access to Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007 along with a connection to the internet.

I like the post processing features and I believe that many students will find this a more natural way for them to check their work. At the present time, Ginger Spell does not support text to speech but this something that the developer will be adding when it is officially released. I found the user interface very intuitive and rather straightforward. Making changes to the text was very easy and Ginger Spell in 90% of the cases made the right suggestion without me having to make any changes. Give it a try by downloading the beta now of Ginger Spell.