Assessing Student's Needs for Assistive Technology (ASNAT)

Chapter 3 – Assistive Technology for Writing
♦ Word Processing Software
Word processing software contains numerous features that assist with composing a paper.
Among the most beneficial are the editing features that allow for changing and rearranging
what has been written without the physical effort of erasing and rewriting, and avoiding the
emotional consequences of handing in a messy paper.
Virtually all word processing software now contains built in spell checking. However, they
vary in their ability to “catch” some of the most common misspellings. For example,
AppleWorks 6 has a phonics based spell checker which is often more successful at figuring
out the word that the student is trying to spell. Microsoft Word, on the other hand, has the
concurrent spell checker and grammar checker, which alerts the writer that he or she has
keyed in a word that does not make sense. One of these features may be more important than
another for a specific student.
♦ Talking Word Processing
Perhaps the most exciting development in recent years has been the talking word processor.
Talking word processing software allows the student to hear letters, words, sentences or
paragraphs spoken by the computer. There are many talking word processing software
programs on the market. Two examples that are available for both the Mac and the PC
include IntelliTalk II ® (IntelliTools) and Write:OutLoud ® (Don Johnston Incorporated).
Talking word processing provides auditory feedback to the student as he or she writes at the
computer. Often this feedback lets the student know whether the letter or word just typed is
the one that was intended. In Write:OutLoud ® the computer can be set to beep and blink
when a word is typed that is not spelled correctly. This alert signal is useful to some students
and bothersome to others.
♦ Abbreviation/Expansion
Abbreviation/expansion allows you to represent words or phrases with a much shorter
abbreviation or keyword. Typically, you type in an abbreviation that is not a regular word
and make it a macro, so that every time you type it, the full version appears. For example, to
type “assistive technology” you might choose “aty” or some other unique combination.
Typing 'aty' writes out "assistive technology" completely with three keystrokes instead of 20.
You need to be careful when you choose your abbreviation. In this example, you cannot use
“a” or “at” because they are each words by themselves. You must select a combination that
you would not typically use.
Abbreviation/expansion is very useful for students with disabilities. It can save time for
things like homework or papers where you nearly always need to put the name of the class,
the hour it occurs, the teacher’s name, the date, the student’s name, etc. at the top of the
paper. These could be set up so that two or three keystrokes produce all of that information.
There are two shareware programs that we have found useful for abbreviation/expansion.
TypeIt4Me is a shareware program for the Macintosh that offers abbreviation/expansion. It is
a control panel that creates abbreviation/expansion capability. Just type a shortcut code and
TypeIt4Me will expand the abbreviation into a full word, phrase, or a paragraph in any
application. You can download this shareware from:
http://trace.wisc.edu/world/computer_access/mac/macshare.html.
Assessing Students’ Needs for Assistive Technology (2004) 92