Opening doors to learning
Assistive technology for students with learning disabilities.

Many students with learning disabilities do not realise their potential at school despite having average or even above average intelligence because characteristics of this group of learners have created barriers to learning. Some of these characteristics, such as persistent and long term difficulties in learning to read and understanding what they read, difficulties in producing written text and organisational difficulties can be circumvented using technology so that these students can participate in classroom events and access classroom curriculum.

I must say at the outset that computers cannot teach students to write and write nor are we looking at technology to remediate or fix the academic and cognitive deficits of students with learning disabilities. Computers cannot replace the diagnostic, prescriptive instruction where teachers intervene at appropriate moments and make the crucial decisions that keep a student’s learning on track. What assistive technology can do is help students with learning disabilities get around their difficulties and to engage with reading and writing so that they can access curriculum. Actually, we could go so far as to say that not to use assistive technology for students experiencing learning disabilities is a disservice to these students.

So, what is this assistive technology and how can it help students with learning disabilities? Let’s start by looking at the difficulties these students are likely to experience and how technology can be used to get around these difficulties.

Support for planning and organisation

Students with learning disabilities often experience difficulties in actually generating ideas or even sufficient and appropriate content for writing. The writing of these students is often poorly structured and ideas are often inadequately developed. Well-designed software programs have the potential to support these students’ planning processes and the development of background knowledge. Outlining and semantic webbing are common practices for organising ideas prior to writing and one application that supports this method of planning is Inspiration. This software program allows users to create electronic outlines and diagrams including concept maps, semantic webs and flow charts as they generate and brainstorm ideas. Notes can be added to the boxes in diagrams to help ‘flesh out’ ideas and cumulatively build a text. The elements in diagrams can be easily rearranged and organised more effectively and the entire web, including notes, can be automatically converted into an outline prior to writing and pasted into a talking word processor ready for writing.

Furthermore, Inspiration is a useful program to help students with their understanding of texts. The diagram view provides the tools to create graphic organisers where students can develop a diagram to show main ideas and supporting details or identify features of the genre such as setting, characters, sequence of events, complication/resolution in narratives, for example. An outline of the features of this program as well as a thirty-day downloadable demonstration (which is a full version) is available from www.inspiration.com

Support for reading and researching

For students with learning disabilities and reading difficulties, print-based text can present major difficulties. While these students frequently are able to comprehend and discuss issues being investigated in the classroom they experience major difficulties with independently researching information and developing their own written assignments. Furthermore, the increasing use of the World Wide Web poses a further barrier to these students. In recent years software developers have created electronic screen readers that convert text to speech. These allow students with reading difficulties to have information on Web pages, electronic encyclopaedia programs and text files read aloud. There is both shareware and freeware available to help students overcome this particular barrier to learning. HelpRead is a supported reading environment for Windows that is designed to highlight and speak aloud text resources. Because it reads aloud information in electronic texts it helps learners gain access to these texts. HelpRead is freeware and is available from www.helpread.com . ReadPlease 2000 is a shareware program, which can be downloaded from http://readplease.com . It features more natural sounding voices although it does not highlight words as it reads.

Support for writing

Students with learning disabilities are often fearful of writing because they have had a history of difficulties in expressing themselves in written language. As a consequence they are often unwilling to engage in writing or will write only a minimal amount. Assistive features of software programs that go beyond those offered by basic word processing provide invaluable tools for both teaching and learning for these students. These features include speech synthesis, speaking spelling checkers and word prediction.

Speech synthesis, or the computerised voice of talking word processors, reads back text displayed on the computer screen. This feature is especially beneficial to those students who need auditory and visual support as they write because it allows students to hear as well as see the text being composed. Texts can be read back by letter, by word, sentence, paragraph or whole text. The usefulness of this auditory feedback, in addition to the visual component, lies in its potential to help students identify errors in sequencing of ideas, meaning, grammar and spelling in their own compositions, that might otherwise have been missed.

Speaking spelling checkers not only sallow students to check for misspelled words in text but also to hear alternative words in the list of options spoken aloud. Spelling checkers also have limitations especially for students with serious spelling difficulties. Spelling checkers do not indicate as errors misspelled words that are other words spelled correctly, such as homophones. (Read and Write TextHelp, a program mentioned below, does speak the meaning of homophones.) Furthermore, the spelling of some students with learning disabilities is so bizarre that spelling checkers cannot provide alternatives. In cases such as this, teachers can explain to students how spelling checkers work and alert them to the fact that they haven’t given enough clues. This situation could then be used as a basis for discussing how students can give more clues by having a better try.

Two programs that offer both speech synthesis and speaking spelling checking are Write: OutLoud and Read and Write TextHelp. Both programs also offer speaking dictionaries as well as other supportive features. Read and Write TextHelp is perhaps more cognitively demanding than Write: OutLoud and may be more useful for students in the upper primary and secondary schools. The features of Write: OutLoud can be viewed at the publishers web sites at www.donjohnston.com while information on the features of Read and Write TextHelp can be viewed at www.texthelp.com .

Word prediction programs help writers by suggesting what the word might be as beginning letters are typed. The list of words is refined as further letters are typed. The write can have the words read aloud and can select a word by typing the number beside the word or clicking on the word. This feature is useful for students who are unsure of the spelling of a word but know the first two or three letters. The programs also predict the next word in the sentence by providing a number of possibilities that fit in the sentence composed so far. This grammatical prediction appears to provide a cue for correct sentence formation. These features help to ease the pressure on students by taking the focus aware from spelling and grammar to get their ideas down.

There are, however, a number of drawbacks to these types of programs for students with learning disabilities. Research into the use of word prediction programs with students experiencing learning disabilities has identified the following. First of all, there is no allowance for phonic substitutions. For example, if students type ‘sos’ for the beginning of ‘sausages’ then there is no way that the program will come up with the correct prediction and the students have to make do with their best try. This is why it is a good idea to use word prediction in conjunction with a program offering speaking spelling checking. Secondly, word prediction places a substantial burden on working memory because it requires the user to attend to spelling while writing rather than afterwards. On the other hand, the researchers found that students whose misspelling are too severe for correction by a spelling checker may benefit from word prediction. In addition, word prediction does not require a user to type the whole word. If the student can figure out the first two or three letters of a word then this may be sufficient for accurate prediction of words. (Reference: Charles MacArthur, "From illegible to understandable: How word prediction and speech synthesis can help" available at www.Idonline.org/qld/indepth/technology/word-prediction.html).

You may like to investigate the features of two software programs that offer word prediction which are used with students experiencing learning disabilities. Co:Writer is a word prediction program that can be used with other word processing programs although it is often used with Write: OutLoud. The same company that produces Write: OutLoud also produces Co: Writer. Information on its features can be found at www.donjohnston.com . Read and Write TextHelp also includes word prediction in addition to its other features. You can find information on this program at www.texthelp.com . (In the latest versions of both Co:Writer 4000 and Read and Write TextHelp Version 5 flexible spelling is included. This means that students do not necessarily have to know the beginning letters of a word to produce an accurate prediction. For example, typing ‘lfnt’ will produce ‘elephant’ in the prediction list.)

In situations where students cannot benefit from the use of word prediction programs possibilities for support include voice recognition programs. With voice recognition technology users speak into a microphone that is connected to a computer and their words appear on screen in a word processing format ready for revision and editing. Sounds like an easy solution, doesn’t it? But is it? What kinds of difficulties might students with learning disabilities experience with using voice recognition? First of all, to help continuous voice recognition programs such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking recognise their voice, students need to read an enrolment text such as a few chapters of the novel, ‘3001: The Final Odyssey’ which is a challenge for students with reading difficulties. Secondly they need to learn to use speech commands to operate the program as well as specific error correction procedures. The program never makes a spelling mistake but it does misrecognise words. Students also need to learn how to dictate to the program. So this imposes quite a cognitive load where they need to compose orally, while holding in mind what they want to compose, and remember the procedures for operating the program and error correction. Furthermore, students need to monitor what they have said and compare with what the program types to see if there are misrecognitions. Although the program does provide speech playback and text-to-speech to help students with this problem, there still are major difficulties for students with reading difficulties.

If you are interested in finding out more information about voice recognition, you may like to investigate the following web sites which provide some research information as well as case studies. Two case studies concerning the use of continuous voice recognition with students experiencing learning disabilities can be found at http:///the-literacy-centre-.com/chapterexrpts.htm . The ‘Speaking to Write’ site provides excellent information on the use of voice recognition with secondary students with learning disabilities in the United States and can be found at http://www.edc.org/spk2wrt . Information on the use of voice recognition in British schools can be found at http:///www.becta.org.uk/inclusion/speechrecog/index.cfm .

Support for struggling writers

Often students with learning disabilities baulk at writing because they know they cannot spell and they haven’t developed strategies for attempting to spell words. Some software programs, such as Clicker 4, have onscreen grids where teachers can place letters, words, phrases and pictures. Students can hear the text spoken by using the R mouse button and have the word or phrase placed in Clicker Writer by using the L mouse button. The program also provides picture support for some words.

For struggling writers the use of picture cues and on-screen word lists may be a motivating factor or provide a pool of ideas. On-screen word lists may provide for students who experience difficulties with word retrieval, who labour over spelling during the writing process or who have limited expressive vocabulary. However, use of on-screen word lists such as these takes away from students the need to hypothesise and try out for themselves how words work. Teaching students strategies for trying out words would encourage more active participation on the student’s part and help overcome the situation where learned helplessness becomes a factor.

In spite of this, Clicker 4 is a flexible program and it can be used in imaginative ways to support learning for a range of students with a range of abilities and ages, including investigating word order, exploring language structures, compiling a glossary of terms for specific topics or creating your own talking book or diagram. You can view the features of this program and some of the grids at the developer’s web site www.cricksoft.com .

Summing up

The advantages and limitations of a small but essential selection of software from a range available to support learning for students with learning disabilities has been outlined. When considering software, teachers and support teachers need to keep in mind the level of support needed for individual students. As with any software, students need to be taught how to use the software effectively and research has consistently shown that students gain the most from software when they have interactions with supportive adults while using the technology, at least initially. It would be hoped that the students would gradually internalise the prompts, strategies and responses for the skilled helper and eventually be able to use technology independently.

Useful web sites

Listed below are some useful web sites in addition to those already mentioned in the article.

http://www.Idonline.org
LD Online is a comprehensive resource for information about learning disabilities.

http://www.schwablearning.org/main.asp?page=3.1
An Assistive Technology Guide focusing on a range of assistive technology available for people with learning disabilities is available from this site.

http://sac.uky.edu/~jszaba0/SETT2.html
Provides a framework for problem solving and decision-making when considering the assistive technology needs of students.

http://education.qld.gov.au/tal/liu/unitplan
The Unit Planning Web Site was designed to assist teachers and support teachers to plan for and support students with learning difficulties and learning disabilities within the unit plan developed for the class as a whole.

http://www.toread.com
Contains a range of resources for language, literacy and reading research.

Judy Gray
Adaptive Technology Services, Low Incidence Unit
Published in On Line, Issue 1, 2001. Reprinted with permission.