Apps for Sensory Impairments

This week’s readings looked at accessibility for students with sensory impairments. Sensory impairments refer to a broad spectrum of disorders that include impairments of vision, touch, and/or hearing. As technology has advanced so too have the apps designed to assist those with sensory impairments in successfully using mobile technology. For example if you are using a 2^nd generation iPod touch you do not have any built in accessibility features. However, fast forward 2 years to the 4^th generation of the iPod touch and you begin to see some accessibility functions to help those with sensory impairments.

Our school just purchased 20 iPad 2s so I will briefly talk about those. If you are using the iPad, the first thing you are going to want to look into are the accessibility settings found right in the general settings menu. They are a bit hidden but well worth it once you find them. You can zoom in and make things bigger. For students with visual impairments you can change the screen to high contrast. There are not options for high contrast so you will have to test and see what works best for your student’s. There are also multitasking gestures.

There are also a number of apps out there but I will say the same thing I said in my post about apps with students with autism, know your student and their needs. I found a list of apps from Eric Sailers called iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch apps for (Special) Education. Some of these apps are great in theory. For example Dragon Dictation will allow a user to speak and it will create text which can then be copied to the clipboard and pasted in other apps, such as email or web browsers. However, for students with multiple disabilities who also have speech difficulties this might not be the best app to assist them in successfully navigating their mobile device. If your student is able to, allow them to be a part of the process in selecting an app by asking for their input of what they liked and did not like in the app. If not it is best to do some extensive research and trial and error. Unfortunately this could become expensive as some apps do not have a “free” or “lite” version to trial.

I am not going to provide any answers for your app questions but I will point out some things to look for when assessing apps. For apps that provide high contrast it is best to know if a particular color scheme works best for your student (there is not just one). Try some of the high contrast settings on your computer to get an idea of which one is best for you student. This provides a larger screen for the student to practice with, and windows also gives a number of color schemes to help those with a variety of visual impairments. For voice recognition apps see if it is something that you can “train” to recognize the speech of your student. A lot of apps for students with visual impairments will speak what button is being pressed again it is important to look at what you can customized in these apps/settings. It is beneficial to be able to control the rate of speech, volume, pitch and tone of the speaker. Apps that allow the user to input speech might be helpful too.

This is the life of a special educator, sifting and sorting through the enormous mass of apps to find the perfect fit to enable your student to succeed and what works for one student might not work for another and it is back to the drawing board.

Apps for individuals with communication impairments

This week’s topic was communication impairments. I am going to start my review of apps with this disclaimer. I am NOT a speech pathologist so what I think is good and works for me as a teacher might not necessarily be the best Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) app there is. There are a ton of apps that focus on improving communication. These apps range from free to over $150, from simple to complex. It is interesting to note that this market for mobile technology devices as AAC devices was not the original intention. However, apps have quickly popped up as educators, parents, and speech pathologists have seen the possible use of these devices to help serve those with communication impairments. With so many options it is hard to even figure out where to start. I am going to skip over the basic apps such as “Answers: Yes No” because there are other apps that have much more to offer. I want to focus on the apps that are set up and work like traditional AAC devices. These apps focus on providing the AAC experience without the stigma of carrying around a clunky AAC device. Again there are numerous apps out there and if this is what you are looking for honestly evaluating all of them is a daunting task. I wrote last week about proloquo2go, one of the first AAC apps. I took a look at a few 2 free versions on my iPod touch, which I will go over here.

First is Sono Flex Lite from Tobii. I picked this app to try because I know that Tobii is an AAC company that produces software and hardware AAC solutions and has branched out into the mobile devices. The Sono Flex app will place symbols in a message window and when the user is ready they can press the message window to produce a complete sentence. The sentence does disappear after it is spoken but is retained in the history for a short period in case the user needs to repeat what he or she just said. The symbols and categories are color coded to make things easier for the user. This is similar to a traditional Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) but unlike traditional PECS this does not use actual pictures which can get lost or destroyed allowing communication to always be at the users fingertips. The full version is $99

Next is MyTalkTools. I picked this one because I know the speech therapists at my agency are looking into getting this for our iPads. This is an app that allows a fair amount of authoring in the paid version. This app also allows a user to work online to create to look of their communication boards. This interface is very user friendly. The keyword is ONLINE, that means I can modify boards from home or at work on any computer! The symbols are on the left window. Users can import their own pictures or use a variety of preinstalled ones. This app also uses Symbolstix, a common set a picture symbols which helps provide continuity between different settings. The middle window provides the layout of the board as it will be seen on the device. Finally, the right window offers the user a tiered look at their boards to see where each page will take the user. The one drawback that I see is that it does seem tricky for speech pathologists or teachers who have multiple students to go back and forth between different users to program for multiple devices under 1 user. Might not be a “make or break” issue but definitely worth considering. The full version of this app has a $49.99 price tag definitely making it one of the more affordable AAC apps out there.

Conspicuously missing from the list is an AAC app from DynaVox. DynaVox is one of the leaders in AAC devices but has mostly stayed away from the mobile technology market. They do have a few apps for flashcards and memory but nothing that serves purposeful communication. For those of you who have never used a DynaVox, they are amazing. They are user friendly with several templates for different levels of users. I have been able to take DynaVox Series 5 software and make a point of sale system that calculates the total of an order and will even do change with 2 decimal places. The software also allows an author to switch between multiple users. These are all things that DynaVox could take advantage of but they are still marketing their own AAC devices and making them more “mobile-like” by offering cameras and internet connectivity. Furthermore the iPad really cannot compete in durability to the DyanVox.

In the end after reading all of this it is best to do whatever is going to work BEST for the person using the device. There is no magic answer that will meet everyone’s needs. Pick an app that allows some authoring and customization and is not going to break the bank. Good luck finding an app and happy hunting.

Apps for Students with Autism

This week our focus was on the use of technology with students with autism. Go into the apple store and just type in “autism” in the search. Go ahead I dare you. Yeah that list is pretty intimidating. There are apps that serve as communication device and choice board creators. There are apps that work on eye gaze and social skills. The list seems never ending, especially as new apps are constantly being developed. There are resources to help weed through and cut your time searching for an app and if you cannot find one you like there are ways to make your own apps.

I have read many books and visited many other blogs that review apps designed for individuals with autism. I have enjoyed reading the Patrick Black’s blog http://teachingall.blogspot.com/. It is not necessarily a blog for apps or students with autism but encompasses technology in all of special education. Patrick does offer a weekly review of an app. Sometimes he reviews the full version of paid apps, which is useful for those not able to spend extra money on an app that might not end up working out. I also have borrowed the book “Apps for Autism” by Lois Jean Brady. This is a pretty comprehensive list of apps for iOS devices. The book is divided into different sections such as apps for communication (sign language apps and voice output apps), apps for occupational therapy and apps that deal with social skills. Her book seems to be much more of a list that a critical review of the apps that are out there. For example, I have had the opportunity to use the app proloquo2go which is listed first in her communication apps and goes for $189.99 in the apple store. I am not a speech pathologist nor am I an expert in communication devices (I trialed a student with a Dynavox 9 years ago) but found it frustrating that many of the words already in the apps library were pronounced incorrectly. This fact was never mentioned in Brady’s book and seems pretty significant thing to not mention for an app that costs so much money.

I have seen many apps and have tried some out and it always seems that while the developers are good they just seem to miss out something significant that would greatly increase the usability of their app. Autism is a broad label that can look different from person to person. Therefore it is difficult to make an app for autism that will serve all individuals with autism equally. I often say to myself or some of my colleagues, “This is a good app, but it is missing something and I can do it better.” I often try make a similar app using boardmaker. I have also recently gotten into creating real apps for android and iOS devices. I use the MIT app inventor at http://appinventor.mit.edu/ for android apps. This is a simple app authoring tool where your projects are kept in the cloud and can be worked on from virtually anywhere. Apps are developed in 2 distinct stages. First you design the look of your app by including any graphics, such as pictures and buttons, and sounds you wish. Next you go to the blocks editor and literally piece together the script that will allow your app to do what you want it. These scripts are in the form of puzzle pieces that will fit together to create a full set of directions. I love this tool and have used it to make some of my own apps to use at home with my kids but have many ideas to try with my students but there are 2 major problems, 1. I simply do not have the time as a teacher in an 7:1+4 classroom to make this happen and 2. Our school has just recently purchased 20 iPads. This brings me to the second app authoring tool that I want to discuss, Stencyl. Stencyl is designed as a game authoring tool that supports flash and iOS currently and is going to expand to android in the future. While this tool is a bit more complex than MIT’s app inventor it does offer more options to the user. Scripting is done in a similar fashion by connecting pieces together in order to program your app. Both sites also include decent tutorials and forum sections for working out any problems you may be having. I have had to use a fair amount of trial and error when using both authoring tools but the result is a fully functional app that is designed the way you want it for your student.

Finally, I have seen that apps designed for and marketed toward helping those with autism often are useful for other disabilities. I often tell new staff to not concern themselves too much with a student’s diagnosis but to focus on their strengths and weaknesses in order to figure out the most effective teaching methods. Therefore it is up to you the teacher to find the best app for your student regardless of their ability level, and if you cannot find the perfect app there are ways to make your own. Let me know if you have any questions about either of the authoring tools or if you have an app you think is worth trying out.