Does Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 run on a netbook?
Posted by Robert Stewart on the 22nd November, 2011
CALL recently carried out an experiment to see how well a Toshiba netbook would cope with Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 (Dragon). Dragon is a speech recognition software package developed and sold by Nuance. The netbook used was a Toshiba NB250 which offers reduced computing power when compared to ...
Adobe Reader X and PDFaloud 3.0 - don\'t bother
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 18th November, 2011
When Adobe Reader X first appeared we tested it and said that it worked with PDFaloud 3.0 (see previous blog). This was true, on my ancient Windows XP laptop. However, we've now been using it for some months on a range of different machines and operating systems and it simply hasn't been reliable....
iPads and specialised communication aids
Posted by 14 on the 17th November, 2011
Words of wisdom from the wonderful Jane Farrall, SLT at Spectronics in Oz. Everyone needs to read this. Keep reading into the second half of this short article. In summary, the iPad is fabulous but it is NOT necessarily the miracle answer to every aspect of all children's communication needs. Than...
Tarheel Reader Books on iPad
Posted by 14 on the 17th November, 2011
Jane Farrall in Melbourne Australia has just published on her blog a really useful step by step instructions for how to get a free book from the Tarheel Reader site into an iPad. Good way to make appropriate materials available without having to make them yourself. (You could also run the book on...
Copying from BoardMaker Studio
Posted by 14 on the 14th November, 2011
I have been weaning myself - slowly - off BoardMaker 6 and on to BoardMaker Studio. I love many of the clever new 'gadgets' for interactive use, though it's taking me a while to get to grips with some of the more complicated ones. I'll post a more comprehensive evaluation soon. BUT ...
technology and asn: information day for parents 12 november
Posted by 4 on the 4th November, 2011
There are still a few places available for any parent interested in coming along to Saturday's Parent Information Day on 12th November 2011. You can find out about and try many of the specialised technologies available to support children and young people with additional support needs. Following...
A quick way to get Stuart to work with PDFaloud
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 13th October, 2011
Following on from the previous post re PDFaloud not offering you Stuart, Robert here in CALL has written a script which finds all the PDFaloud safe voice lists on your Windows computer and adds Stuart to them. Here's what to do: Install Stuart first. Save the file to your comput...
Cartoon Video introducing Assistive Technology
Posted by 14 on the 3rd October, 2011
This fun little cartoon video explains much of what is important about assistive technology for disabled users, in a clear and pretty cool way.Update: I should clarify. The CALL Scotland team did not make this video, though I would be very proud if we had. We are just passing it on for wider...
How to use the new
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 28th September, 2011
The new Scottish male computer voice is now available for download from CALL's web site. 'Stuart' works with most text-to-speech programs including for example ClaroRead, Co:Writer, PDFaloud, Penfriend, Read and Write Gold and WordTalk. However, if you install Stuart on your computer, you won't ...
Speech recognition and SQA Digital Question Papers
Posted by Paul Nisbet on the 23rd September, 2011
A common question we get from staff, parents and students is "Can I use speech recognition software to dictate my answers into the computer in an examination?" and so SQA funded us to spend some time trying to answer this. We've written a report with the results of the tests we've carried out on...
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