In January I had the pleasure of attending Bett 2016 (the British Education Technology and Training Show). It’s a fantastic event and the big date in the calendar for those of us passionate about Assistive Technology. There’s so much there to get inspired by and excited about and it’s always great to see some familiar faces and meet lots of lovely new ones.
I thought I’d share with you some of the latest DSA/ATW software developments from the frontline of Assistive Tech!
It was great to discover that Read&Write are now offering even more flexibility for DSA Students. There’s now the ability to enjoy Read&Write anywhere and on any device – PCs, Macs, Chromebooks and tablets.
Read&Write’s package now gives DSA Students access to all of the following:
– Read&Write 11.5 for Windows
– Read&Write for Mac
– Read&Write for tablets
– Read&Write for Chromebooks
So, for all you Read&Write users: click on the link below, enter your
Read&Write serial number and then complete the registration form to access this fantastic bundle.
https://www.texthelp.com/en-gb/sectors/education/dsa/student-serial-registration
Launchpad Top Tip: PC Users can find their serial number under ‘About’ in the dropdown options next to the Read&Write logo at the end of the toolbar. For Mac Users, click ‘Read&Write Gold’ on the menu bar and it’s under ‘About Read&Write Gold’.
The guys at MindView are very excited, and quite rightly, about their new MindView Online. This is the web-based version of MatchWare’s award winning mind mapping software but now with the flexibility of accessing the software from any computer or tablet with an internet connection.
Lawrence at MindView also proudly told me that they’d been awarded a ‘trusted accreditation badge’ by the Digital Accessibility Centre. It’s proof that MindView work to the highest accessibility standards for Assistive Tech users.
Some of you might already know that I work very closely with the guys over at Sonocent and I’ve been a big champion of Audio Notetaker for many years. They’re a company that always seem to have something exciting in the pipeline. At Bett, we chatted about the forthcoming release of a new paid app which will include some great new features. One that I’m very pleased to be able to share is the ability to now create your own custom Colour Template on your phone or tablet. I’ve had the pleasure of testing the Beta version and I think you’re going to love it.
Nuance have released their latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking called Dragon Professional Individual, so it’s effectively V14 of DNS. This version has full support for Windows 10 and Office 2016 and it will become the version recommended for DSA/ATW users.
You can learn more at:
http://www.nuance.com/for-individuals/by-product/dragon-for-pc/index.htm
It was great to catch up with my friends at Claro Software, especially off the back of our successful YouTube collaboration! If you haven’t already seen the videos yet, please click on the link below (and if you’re feeling nice, give us a like and subscribe to the channel).
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaAbO4HOjCx6gWyf9-Mx-AA
So, what’s new at Claro? Well, Version 7 is out for ClaroRead for PC, and it runs more smoothly and easily than ever! It can be downloaded from their new ClaroRead Cloud service where you can also access extra downloads and services:
– ClaroRead Cloud OCR
– ClaroSpeak and ClaroPDFs Apps
– ClaroSpeak Web
– ClaroRead Chrome Extension
You can get the latest ClaroRead by logging in to ClaroRead Cloud and entering your ClaroRead licence key. You can then download ClaroRead 7 and any of their 80 high-quality text-to-speech voices in 30 languages. You also get the opportunity to download an additional copy for a second machine and a ClaroRead for Mac. If you own a copy of ClaroRead but don’t have a licence key, just get in touch with support@clarosoftware.com to get one. Note that ClaroRead 6 or 7 keys work just the same – you don’t need a new ClaroRead 7 key if you have a ClaroRead 6 one already!
