Young child with Down syndrome uses symbol-based AAC from AssistiveWare to communicate with an adult and another child with hile playing with a dinosaur stuffy and Lego. Image from: https://www.assistiveware.com/learn-aac/what-is-aac

Weekly Reflection #8: Reflecting on tools and technologies that support universal design for learning (UDL)

Our final readings, resources, and activities taught me a lot about how assisted technology can support me as a teacher in engaging with UDL. I wanted to look into some specific technologies that my students might be using, or benefit from using.

Text-to-speech

Text-to-speech tools allow written content to be read aloud, which can be a game changer for students who struggle with decoding, attention, or visual processing.

Here are some examples of text-to-speech technology:

  • Read&Write: offers screen reading, word prediction, and vocabulary supports. Check it out!
    Microsoft Immersive Reader: built into many Microsoft tools (like Word, which I used to type the draft to this reflection!) and allows students to adjust text size, spacing, and hear text read aloud. Learn more about Immersive Reader.

Text-to-speech lets students to focus on meaning rather than just decoding. This means if I’m assessing a student’s ability to predict in a science context, for instance, they could absolutely use text-to-speech to read out a text about a situation or an experiment – otherwise, their difficulty reading would hinder them. Text-to-speech is also great because it promotes independence and feelings of self-efficacy – students who struggle to read don’t always need to rely on an EA or teacher or peer to read aloud to them.

Speech-to-text

Speech-to-text works in the opposite direction, allowing students to speak their ideas instead of writing them. This can be especially helpful for students with writing challenges, motor difficulties, or those who think better out loud/feel disconnect between their thoughts and the pen and paper.

Examples I found:

  • Google Docs Voice Typing 
  • Dragon NaturallySpeaking 
  • Otter.ai 

I’ve worked as an EA supporting a Grade 4 boy with cerebral palsy and autism, and he found Voice Typing on Google Docs very helpful and affirming. He could write by hand, and type, but he found these very taxing and his low fine motor skills meant he’d often make mistakes, which was frustrating. This is an example of speech-to-text being helpful because it meant he didn’t need to depend on me, an adult, to scribe for him – he felt more independent and capable like his classmates. Using speech-to-text shifts the focus from handwriting/typing to the ideas, which is often what we actually want to assess.

VR/AR for Inclusion

I hadn’t considered that virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) could be tools for inclusion. But, of course, they can open up possibilities for experiential learning that might not otherwise be accessible to all students.

An example is Google Arts & Culture (formerly known as Google Expeditions) – it could allow students to explore places like museums, oceans, or sites without leaving the classroom. This would be great if you had a student with mobility needs and wanted to visit somewhere that wasn’t very accessible.

A view of climbers setting up multi-colour tents on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro, with a steep grassy incline and a blue sky waiting at the top. Image from Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/project/expeditions

The Importance of Alt Text

One of the biggest lessons I learned from the last week of class was the importance of Alt text. I hadn’t been using it in my blog post, but it is one of those small things that makes a big difference by giving a written description of images so that students using screen readers can still access the content.

I added alt text to all of the images in this blog post, as well as my final inquiry blog – a small p but important step toward making my work more inclusive!