Hand-shake a Mouse! Vertical Mouse an Ergonomic Support

The Evoluent Vertical Mouse
I stumbled across this great idea and thought I would share. I haver tendonitis in my forearm and I am thinking this might help.



I found it listed on sale for $69.95 from The Human Solution.

Al the best to you,
Lon




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i Speak It for Mac and iPhone Text to Speech

i Speak It by Zapptek

I wish I were a Mac User - but I am locked into our Windows PC world in our school districts. As I have been exploring the text to speech options within the iPhone world, I have been getting great tips from readers. The i Speak It app from Zapptek looks promising - if you own a MAC.

It converts files to audio and then is a companion to your iPhone or iTouch. It converts Word docs, PDF, Pages, RTF, Appleworks, Text files and HTML files. It converts those to Mp3/AAC track files through iTunes so you get the text as a lyric as you listen, to follow along on screen (that's what it says...dunno exactly how that works).

Sounds pretty cool - but I can't test it on my PC. If anyone has it, let us know what you think.

All the best to you!
Lon

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wUnderGlow LED light: Safety and Fun for Wheelchairs

I had a late Christmas gift idea shared by a reader that I thought I would add to the gift idea list on my sidebar. If you ever are looking for a gift that has an assistive technology slant to it, check out my sidebar gift list with links.

The wUnderGlow was too fun to pass up. It reminds me of the hotrod cars with the lighting under the running boards - except a wheelchair version and it helps let someone see you coming. It could be very helpful - and I have a first-hand story to prove it!

I had a scare over the holiday when there was snow plowed up on the sides of the road forcing a motorized wheelchair to drive around it out into my lane on the street. I pulled out of a parking lot and almost ran into the wheelchair. That would have made a great headline: "Assistive Technology Specialist Rear-ends Powered Wheelchair in Christmas Rush Traffic."

I have attached the video for the wUnderGlow below:

All the best to you!
Lon




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Raise in Autism Rates and Non-verbal Rates will Impact AT and SLP Services

In my work, I have been seeing an increase in Autism occurances - as has been reported in many studies, like this one from CDC, but I have also seen more incidences of non-verbal children in our schools. I am collabiorating more and more with our SLP's and EI/ECSE Specialists to develop AT supports and strategies. This past fall has been the busiest so far.

I was interested to see a link to an article about a poll by YouGov in the UK, that showed children are reaching the age of 3 without being able to say a word. It also showed that "boys are almost twice as likely to struggle to learn to speak than girls".
The survey results were released by I CAN, a children's communication charity.
On their news release, they provide links to download the survey results. The collection was done between December 15 and 18 of 2009 and 1015 parents of children 1 to 7 responded.

You can also get more info at http://www.talkingpoint.org.uk/

Also, the CDC report at the beginning of this post was featured in The Age of Autism, a daily newpaper on the Autism epidemic. Therre are some great articles and features to keep up on posted there.

What do you see as the impact this data has on assistive technology services and speech services to early intervention and early childhood populations?

All the best to you,

Lon

image credit:http://www.aact4children.org/aboutus.html

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iPhones, Kindles, E-Books and Text to Speech Readers

The VOD app for the iPhone by CYPAC can read DAISY 2.02 files.

I have been playing with my iPhone lately and I have been teased and tempted, but just can't come up with a combination of apps that works to hear books directly from text. I have purchased several apps and tried to find a work-around to get text files to read. I downloaded the Beverly Cleary Book "Ribsy" powered by Iceberg. I bought if off iTunes for $3.99. In a description on iTunes it seemed that you might be able to copy and paste sections of the text into a notes section and then copy those to another app to hear them read, but that feature had been turned off by publishers for copyright reasons in the book I bought. I had hoped to paste sections into my Speak it! app and then hear it read back. The only thing I could do was type a note attached to a paragraph and then copy the note I wrote to hear it back. All the text was locked. I discovered that the Iceberg Reader has a kids division with young children's literature.

The Iceberg Reader for kids was reviewed by The iPhone Mom. She reviewed a Curious George title that has the illustrations and actually reads the page as an audio book. You can pause and play, flip pages and bookmark favorites. This is the closest I have found to doing what I would like to do with a book on the iPhone. Good job Iceberg Reader.

I added an app, TouchReader, thinking that might let me add a public domain text to my iPhone and have it read, but even though it is a great app for getting text files onto your iPhone, changing the text size and black on white vs white on black, the text is locked and you can't copy and paste it anywhere else.

I was reading a review of the Kindle 2 and it dealt with how the text to speech setting was hampered and left up to the publishers whether to make it accessible or not. Amazon didn't feel it was competitive with the publisher's audio versions, but the publishers felt otherwise.

The issue is the same on the iPhone - there are copyright issues stopping the accessibility. As one commenter put it, "If I could read a real book or afford audio books of all my books, I would rather, but I am stuck with listening to a mechanical voice read books to me. How can that be a threat to the publishers that want to sell audio books?"

I am still exploring options. I had a reader email me recently about VOD, Voice of DAISY, which is a $12.99 app that only plays older DAISY 2.02 files. If you already have DAISY 2.02 files, you can read them on the iPhone or iTouch. It looked pretty slick, but I couldn't find any links to it on DAISY Consortium. I had to go directly to the Japanese company CYPAC that made it to find it.

If you come up with any solutions or new discoveries please keep me posted and I will share them here. Thanks to all the great readers who have been sending me questions and tips lately. It makes this blog more dynamic as we share together.

All the best to you!

Lon

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Assistive Technology Blog Carnival for 2010

A New Assisive Technology Blog Carnival is Underway for 2010

Welcome to 2010!

Patrick Black of "Teaching All Students" is excited to host the carnival from his blog. He is putting out the call for all bloggers to write a post on their blogs and share the link so we can travel around and do some visiting and reading. The topic is open and you can share a story, a tip, trick, new tool, etc.

Visit the AT Blog Carnival Site and Teaching All Students for more information.

Thanks Patrick!

Lon




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No Limits to Learning in Top 10 Assistive Technology Blogs for 2009

Top 50 Blogs for Special Education Teachers - No Limits to Learning Included!

Online Unversities.com has put out their Top 50 list of Blogs for Special Education Teachers. They have broken down the top fifty into 6 categories:
1. Sped Teaching Tips and Strategies
2. technology and Assistive Technology
3. Specific Disabilities
4. Special Education News and Policy
5. Special Education Law
6. Various Topics on Special Education

I am humbled and thrilled to be included in the top 50 special education blogs and among the top 10 assistive technology ones. Many of the other blog authors have contributed to the AT Blog Carnival, which should be coming back for another edition after some time off.
I am in good company with my friend and mentor, Brian Friedlander Ph.D of Assistive Technology; My friend and colleague Patrick Black, of Teaching All Students, who has hosted the AT Blog Carnival in the past and plans to do another here shortly to kick off 2010; Karen Janowski's always amazing, Ed Tech Solutions: Teaching Every Student; and Paul Hamilton's Free Resources from the Net for Every Learner , collaborator from SET BC. Also among the top was AT Cubed by Brian Wojic who administers the Web 2.0 group assistive tech. If you haven't joined this group I would recommend it.
One of my favorie blogs with a writer who always sparks my thinking and challenges the way I approach education and disability is Ira Socol's SpeEdChange. He was included in the Special Education News and Policy category. Kate Ahern's Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs was included under the various topic category. Her blog is always dynamic and crammed with ideas. Her links and resources are about the best you will find on a blog. I have told her that her blog is what mine wants to be some day when it grows up!
So... I encourage you to check these blogs out - many are on my blogroll, and check out the complete list here.

All the best for a GREAT new Year in 2010!
Lon



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