Dyslexie - A new tool for the accessibility toolbox

The other night, during the 2 1/2 hour rain delay at Fenway Park, my niece and I chatted about twitter, blogging and other forms of information transfer. She mentioned that she had heard heard of a "new weighted font" that was developed to help those with dyslexia. Needless to say, I was intrigued with the idea of improving print accessibility for people with print disabilities.   


Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a life long condition that impacts literacy. It often runs in families, and is prevalent in approximately 10-15% of the population. It often goes undiagnosed. People with dyslexia tend to think non-verbally; they think in pictures rather than in words. This tends to be a problem in our text-driven society.

 

Enter Christian Boer and Studiostudio. Boer created Dyslexie not as a cure for dyslexia, but as a tool to help make type more readable. As a dyslectic himself, he reasoned that since dyslectics think visually and respond well to graphics, why not develop a new typeface that was more three dimensional than existing fonts?


Let Gravity Prevail

Boer found that adding "weight" to the bottom of characters anchored them to the baseline, and enabled struggling readers to identify and discriminate between visually similar letters (such as b and d or b and p).  Just like gravity pulls mass toward the center of the earth, the weighted portion of the letter is pulled down to the baseline.  Other typeset modifications include an increase in the ascending or descending lines on some letters, and tipping others from their north pole-south pole alignment. People with print disabilities made fewer word errors and miscues when reading text in Dyslexie typeface.

The Final Word
As of now, Dyslexie is not available as free-ware, and is currently priced at 700 Euros, or approximately $1,000.

Math Musings

Ok, my post today was supposed to be about using 3D technology in the classroom, but I was distracted by something my sister and I were discussing this morning. My sister is a middle school math/science teacher and for some unfathomable reason, we began talking about math fluency in middle school.  We chatted about the merits of informally assessing math skills in order to redress weaknesses and capture quantifiable data for progress reports. We agreed that just as reading fluency impacts a student's ability to comprehend text, math fluency impacts a student's ability to comprehend the language of numbers. Both areas require a solid base upon which to build more advanced concepts.

I remarked that there are several informal assessments to track fluency and comprehension for reading, but there appeared to be a dearth of informal resources to assess math fluency. Why is this? Is it that reading fluency is more important than math fluency? We have a QRI, why not a QMI?

I hung up with my sis, and being the technophile that I am, I began searching the web for informal math assessments for middle school and high school students. I trolled the internet for 3 hours...and came up with next to nothing. I found many informal inventories for grades K- 6, and only one honorable mention for grades K - 8 (Scholastic Math Inventory by Tom Snyder ). Nothing for grades 6-12. Back to square one.

I did find a few math related gems on the web today, so my searching wasn't a total loss.

UEN 7-12 Student Interactives is a free website developed by the Utah Education Network for students grades 7-12. The UEN site has links to math, science, ELA, social studies, lesson plans, video resources, worksheets and more. The math practice for upper level math students includes activities for algebra, geometry, data/probability, number sense and money skills. Each topic area has a variety of activities that are attractive, interactive and engaging. What I like about this website is that each activity displays and has links to the necessary video drivers to run effectively. Take some time to explore this website, it is well worth it! The activities for Geometry and Data/Probability are detailed below. Click on the picture to link to the math activities.

My second find was the MathStar website, created by the Los Angeles County Office for Education. This site has interactive activities for students, lesson plans and resources for teachers, worksheets, and discussions. The site did have a few broken links, but overall it is a great resource for middle school math teachers and students.

Try the Mat Board Activity:

My next blog will cover 3D technology and its educational applications. Enjoy!

Welcome!

This is my inaugural post for my new blog, AsTek Talk, a coffeehouse forum to share and discuss technology that allows people with learning, cognitive and physical differences to access the world around them. I am a technophile at heart, but this blog will not be limited only to high tech educational ideas and solutions, but to low tech as well. So please feel free to add to the discussion. I welcome your thoughts and opinions!

On to the blog...

As a special educator, I am always looking for new and exciting things that will help my students access the curriculum in school AND at home. For high incidence special learners, specialized technology truly does level the educational playing field. Specialized technology does not have to be expensive, and in the case of one of my favorite suite of applications, is it free.

RSC, the Regional Support Center Scotland North and East has a phenomenal group of people who have designed and developed free downloadable software to benefit people with learning differences. Every time I check their website, I am amazed to see that they have added new and improved applications that are flexible, customizable and portable. All applications are designed to run from a flash drive as well as a hard drive. Students can customize their applications and run them anywhere, from any computer that supports a usb drive. What makes this so exciting in my opinion (other than that these wonderful downloads are free), is that they can be used at school and at home.

MyStudyBar has literacy supports that enable users to access content using their computer. It includes mind mapping, calendars, sticky notes, customizable background and text color, text masking, word prediction, talking dictionary, text to speech, a screen magnifier, NVDA screen reader, and voice recognition.

 

Next is MyVisBar, a suite of apps that offers support to learners with visual difficulties. It includes a screen magnifier, text masking, a screen reader and more.

Finally, a most exciting addition, Create&Convert which allows educators (and others!) to create/translate electronic documents into an accessible alternative format, such as audio or a talking book. This powerful (and free) application is a technology similar to more expensive document readers AND converts text to braille.

Enjoy, and please feel free to comment!