Group items tagged

Visit the AIM Center website to find (and download in one document) the latest information on over 40 digital readers. Sources gathered include freeware, open source, and commercial products for use with digital content; including screen readers, text-to-speech programs, hand-held readers, hybrid devices, organization applications, and more. A description of each application or device with highlights of its features and capabilities, as well as links for obtaining additional information, is provided

"Every now and then, we like to remind readers of the audio/video resources that Open Culture makes available to lifelong learners. These collections are all free, and can be downloaded to your computers and mp3 players. When you add it all together, you will find thousands of hours of free educational content here from quality sources. I"

"The definitive site for free visual tools and devices also includes support tools. Compiled by Karl Gude of Michigan State University's School of Journalism from various sources on the internet. All were given strong recommendations and some may appear under more than one category."

"The openWeb Browser is a browser that helps solve that problem by giving the internet a more readable style on your iPhone (and iPhone 5) and iPad. * The default font is OpenDyslexic: a free open-source font designed to be easy to read, especially for dyslexic readers. This font looks great on retina displays. * The colors have slightly less contrast to help prevent glare. * Symbols are bolder, and darker, to help detect sentences and phrases. "

"A look at how visual supports for children with autism could be improved through customized supports and an open-source image librar"

- Open source webcam mouse emulator "Enable Viacam (aka eViacam) is a mouse replacement software that moves the pointer as you move your head. It works on standard PCs equipped with a web camera. No additional hardware is required. Based on the award winning Facial Mouse software. "

"ATbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help users customise the way they view and interact with web pages. The concept behind ATbar is simple: One toolbar to provide all of the functionality you would usually achieve through the use of different settings or products. Download ATbar is free and allows you to change the look and feel of webpages, increase and decrease font sizes, have text read aloud, use coloured overlays, readability and a dictionary to aid reading. Spell check forms and try word prediction when writing. It is a simple tool which is available for most popular browsers. There are three versions of the ATbar toolbar."

"MyStudyBar is a tool which helps overcome problems that students commonly experience with studying, reading and writing. The tool consists of a set of portable open source and freeware applications, assembled into one convenient package. Easy to install, simple to use, handy and effective, MyStudyBar provides comprehensive learning support at the desktop, where it is needed. And if this is not already attractive enough, a further eye-catching feature of MyStudyBar is that it is completely FREE to download and free to use."

"One of the challenges in providing students with the most significant disabilities with access to the general curriculum is finding materials that link directly to the grade level content, but are written at a level that is accessible. As part of the DLM™ project we have been building a library of companion texts that go with the exemplar texts called out in the Appendix of the Common Core State Standards. These books are accessible, open-source texts that you and your students can read online, on a reader that uses epub files, or offline as Powerpoint files or printed versions of the books. "

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Currently posting 1,800 short video teaching targeted topics. We are complementing Salman's ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World.

calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories: * Library Management * E-book conversion * Syncing to e-book reader devices * Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form * Comprehensive e-book viewer

"AccessApps is an initiative supported by the JISC Regional Support Centres (RSC) and JISC TechDis. It consists of over 60 open source and freeware Windows applications, running from a USB stick. AccessApps provides a range of solutions to support writing, reading and planning as well as sensory, cognitive and physical difficulties."

"EduApps is an initiative developed by the JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East and consists of four different collections of incredibly useful software: * AccessApps provides a range of solutions to support writing, reading and planning, as well as sensory, cognitive and physical difficulties. * TeachApps is a collection of software specifically designed for teachers or lecturers. * LearnApps, as its name implies, is specifically designed for learners. All learners or students can benefit from LearnApps. * MyStudyBar is our new kid on the block, providing a suite of apps to support literacy. Currently we host over 90 open source and freeware software applications which can be entirely used from a USB stick on a Windows computer. "

So who wants to test this out and see how it all works? Sounds promising!

Patti, BIll Nellis has develolped PD using these apps. He shows the participants how to create their own Thumb Drive with a collection of AT apps that run entirely from the Thumb Drive. It is a WONDERFUL idea and has tons of application for therapists or AT professionals who travel from school to school.

source for digital text

"The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information. "

"The goal of the myEye project is to develop an eye-tracking software to allow people with severe motor disabilities to use gaze as an input device for interacting with a computer. myEye was thought to help people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also called ALS or "Lou Gehrig's disease"), who have lost their voice, and may only be able to move their eyes. myEye will be a free eye-tracking software (but not open source) for eye control, so I don't want to create false expectations. This software hopes to be just one more alternative for people who can't afford a commercial eye-tracking system, but I can't guarantee it will work for everyone."