Learning Difficulties
A reading disability can affect any part of the reading process, including difficulty with accurate or fluent word recognition, or both, word decoding, reading rate, and reading comprehension. Common indicators of reading disability include difficulty with phonemic awareness - the ability to break up words into their component sounds, and difficulty with matching letter combinations to specific sounds (sound-symbol correspondence), and also memory problems.
Technologies like DAISY can help people around the world with learning difficulties such as reading disabilities, dyslexia, illiteracy, or vision loss. Below please find a selection of products that may help:
HumanWare ClassMate Reader
The ClassMate Reader is designed to improve reading skills, developing and understanding vocabulary, while promoting phonetic recognition and fluency. Includes an SD card with sample content reading materials.
More information is available on the HumanWare website.
Intel Reader
The Intel® Reader enhances independence for people with visual impairments, blindness, or reading-based learning disabilities by providing convenient and flexible access to a variety of printed materials. More information is available on the HumanWare website.
EasyReader
Software DAISY player that you need to download and install on your Windows computer. EasyReader supports a wide range of eBook formats, including DAISY, HTML, TXT, unprotected EPUB, text nrked up as MathML. Free trial is available on the Dolphin Computer Access website.
ida-reader
Users can read the highlighted text on the computer screen and hear the same words spoken out loud at the same time. This application is very useful for people faced with reading challenges such as dyslexia, as the text being read aloud also gets highlighted. It is also suitable for people who like listening to text being read aloud instead of having to read it. The ida-reader© has a host of interesting features like bookmarking, selection of voices, change of reading speed, a customized library and text search.
Free trial is available on the ida-reader website. This product is jointly developed and marketed by xml-tekst and Planman Technologies.
Dolphin's SaySo
SaySo is an easy to use toolbar, offering a collection of features empowering people with dyslexia to read and write with confidence. To assist with reading, SaySo includes human sounding voices to read back documents, emails and web pages. SaySo also saves documents as MP3s (or DAISY books) that users can read on the go on their cell phone, MP3 player or DAISY player. Users can also scan and then read documents. More information about SaySo and a 30-day free trial are available on the Dolphin Computer Access website.
ReadHear™ Mac or PC
The first ever fully-featured Digital Talking Book player for the Mac. ReadHear Mac provides excellent benefits to those who enjoy and appreciate learning and listening to all types of books, articles, and documents.
Free trial is available. Please go to the gh, LLC website to download or purchase.
Resources
Coping With Learning Disabilities: Tips for Parents
