COMPARING TEXT ACCESS
APPLICATIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES
Presenter(s)
Renee
Western Regional Manager
Freedom Scientific Learning Systems Group
Day Phone: 888—2 23—3344, ext. 127
Email: reneec@freedomscientific.com
Presenter
#2
Martin
McKay
Texthelp
Systems
Day Phone: +44 28 944 28105 C N.Ireland
Email:
m.mckay@texthelp.com
It is always best to match the strengths of a
particular product with the needs of a specific individual, even if many
situations will call for trying to make one application work for the needs of
many different individuals with similar disability characteristics at the same
time. For someone trying to select an appropriate text access application for a
person with a learning disability, it may be confusing to try to match up the
many diverse capabilities of a particular product and the specific needs of a
user. This job only increases with difficulty when a person then attempts to
make a comparison between two or more competing products which each has their
own array of differing capabilities.
As
an aid to anyone who would find themselves in such a difficult situation, this
presentation will attempt to demonstrate an initial comparison between three
excellent text access applications on the market today: Kurzweil 3000, Read
& Write Gold, and WYNN. Presenters from each product company will be asked
to highlight the strengths of their products, and demonstrate to the audience
how a person with a learning disability would benefit from using this
technology.
The design of the 90-minute session will be as follows:
0:00 0:05 Introduction by Norman Coombs and Christopher Lee
0:05 — 0:30 Kurzweil Presentation
0:30 — 0:55 Read & Write Gold
0:55 — 1:20 WYNN
1:20 1:30 Audience questions an wrap—up
Presentations
will be timed by the moderators in the interest of fairness to all presenters.
All presenters will be supplied with the same examples of text content in
different file formats well in advance of the session and asked to demonstrate
the use of this content during their session. Presenters are also free to use
other content of their own individual choice as time allows.
The
primary focus will be on how these applications can be used to support
students. This session will not be a “competition” between products, but rather
a means of highlighting the strengths of each product so that an educator can
begin to understand how a particular product’s strengths could make for an
excellent match for the needs of a particular student the educator is working
with, while perhaps another product may be a better match based upon a
different setting and needs of a different student.
Rather than doing any real-time scanning, the presenters will all be supplied with the same pre—prepared for use with all applications. The content will be obtained from excerpts of publisher textbook files and edited files from college campus DSS offices. Examples of formats to be used will include PDF, Word, RTF, and ASCII. Presenters will be asked to agree on final plans before the session is conducted so that a degree of uniformity between presenters will be possible. However, each presenter will have some flexibility to talk about something that he/she believes is important to understand about their product.
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