Assistive technology summary Andrew Downie Centre for Learnin g Innovation NSW Department of Education & Training 1

Areas we will cover Vision impairment and blindness Hearing impairment and deafness Physical disabilities Neurological disabilities –Huge individual variation within each group –Therefore equipment selection not always easy –Limiting to online access –Some equipment relevant to more than one disability type 2

Vision impairment and blindness Screen readers –Synthetic speech and/or electronic Braille output –Essentially limited to reading text –Sophisticated facilities for displaying visual presentation –Narrator built into Windows and VoiceOver built into the Mac –NVDA for Windows free from Text/graphics enlargement software –Many magnification and colour selection options –Optional augmentation with synthetic speech –Accessibility in Windows and VoiceOver on the Mac Specialised personal data assistants 3

Hearing impairment and deafness Hearing aids FM and infrared systems Magnetic field loop Cochlear implant Captions for multimedia presentations Live captions –Red Bee Media 4

Physical disabilities Keyguards for computer keyboards Software to modify keyboard functions –Sticky Keys etc in Windows and Mac Alternative keyboards Switch access to computers Head-mounted pointing devices On-screen keyboards Predictive software Speech input to computers Augmentative communication devices 5

Neurological disabilities Neurological disabilities include: –Intellectual disability; –Acquired brain injury; and –Specific learning disabilities Multimedia reading assistance Word prediction and contextual assistance Membranous keyboards Electronic dictionaries 6

DAISY (Digital Access Information System) – Can synchronise text, audio and graphics Commercial and free tools for production and playing Human or synthetic speech 7

Contacting Andrew Phone:(02) Accessibility blog – 8