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.