Assistive Technology Apps for the iPhone and iTouch: AAC and Speech to Text



I have been exploring apps for the iPhone for assistive technology. We are adding an iTouch to our equipment loan center to trial Proloquo2go Here is a blog article on it from the Autism site on Change.org.

I got word the other day that Nuance is coming out with Dragon Naturally Speaking for the iPhone. The app isn't up and ready yet, but will be soon. See the blog post on Crave from CNET for "Texting without Typing" for more information.

While I was looking, I went to the Nuance site for more information the Dragon iPhone application. I found a great video tutorial on using a voice recorder on the iPhone to add into Dragon and get it transcribed. The video site is called "Skill Casting" and you can see the video here. The teacher is such a fun and pleasant person! I was impressed.

I am probably way behind many of you in getting these tools out and used, but we are seeing the potential of using these handheld apps for our students in middle and high school that think they are too cool to drag around a speech generating device or use some of the mainstream software tools on a "special" computer just for them in the back of the room. Maybe you don't struggle with those issues, but I sure do! Maybe as technology grows, these handheld apps will be the answer for many. Now with the Google phones, Droid, etc. the apps are moving way past only the iPhone. We have to run to keep up...

All the best to you!

Lon