Apps for Dyslexia

Some thoughts on apps for dyslexic students from educators, parents and students themselves

1. Dragon Search - (FREE) Dragon Search is a great free app that allows you to use talk commands to search for information on Google, Youtube, Itunes, or Wikipedia. No more typing!

2. Dragon Dictate - (FREE) Another super free app from the makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon Dictate can be used to dictated your email messages, Facebook posts, Twitter, or notes to yourself.

3. Web Reader - ($1.99) Web Reader is our pick for speech-to-text reading of webpages. WebReader will read webpages to you and you can use copy and paste to limit the read sections. The voices are pretty good (male and female) and can be used also for Project Gutenberg books, Google Reader and RSS Feeds. You can control the speed of reading and also use a highlighter function.

4. My Homework - (FREE) My Homework is a simple color-coded organizer to help with deadlines, classes, tests, etc. Notes can be sent to your email.

5. Evernote - (FREE) Finally, Evernote is a handy app for keeping track of information. You can copy text, take a picture, record an audio message and Evernote will keep track of it and sync to your Mac, PC, or web. Pictures can also be filed with text that can be searched later. Use this for taking picture of instructions written on a whiteboard, notes to yourself, stuff you may want to look at later.

From: http://www.dyslexicadvantage.com/top-iphone-apps-dyslexia.html

An app called “Martha Speaks” is a part of “The Great Word Quest,” a free online literacy game that is also accessible on Flash-enabled smart phone browsers. “Martha Speaks” focuses on building the oral vocabulary of 4- to 7-year-olds. It’s a compliment to the other two games: “Word Girl” and “The Electric Company,” which are more literacy-based

From: http://dyslexia.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/pbs-offers-apps-for-kids/

Writing aid software "Typ-O" to the iPad combines a language model, a spelling error database and a model of dyslexic typing errors to provide word predictions and regular spell checking while you type.

From a parent: 'We have free apps such as SPELL THAT! , dragon dictation, dragon search, ace multiply , mathboard,, plus countless books in iBooks with the text to speech shortcut key. The bright clean screen, the fewer words per page and only seeing one page at a time has been immensely helpful. I highly recommend it. We organize his work in ihomework.With regards to his courses in school, we look up the topics he is doing in iBooks and buy simpler books with pictures ( such as magnets) so he can understand the material, yet be able to read it in an easier format.

Another student uses: Writing aid software "Typ-O" to the iPad. It basically combines a language model, a spelling error database and a model of dyslexic typing errors to provide word predictions and regular spell checking while you type.

From: http://dyslexicbrian.com/resources/is-the-ipad-good-or-bad-for-dyslexic-children/

From a student: I’m in 8th grade and I have dyslexia and an iPad it differently has awesome features that help me a lot like when you select a word you have the option to use the dictionary to find out what it means. Also if you spell a word wrong it has automatic or selected word correction. There are many awesome apps that help a lot like:The Elements, World Factbook, The Solar system, Wolframn Alpha algebra, istudiez pro, Brain Pop, 3D cell, Dragon Dictation, Audiotorium, Mathboard, Penultimate, iBooks,vbooks and the recommended dictionary for dyslexia Collins Cobuild Dictionary.

From: http://dyslexicbrian.com/resources/is-the-ipad-good-or-bad-for-dyslexic-children/

Kindergarten.com currently have 26 apps listed on their site which are based on "Applied Behavioral Analysis" (ABA) techniques geared toward cognitive level rather than grade level. These apps are designed to meet the needs of "children with learning disabilities such as speech or language delays, hearing loss, ADD/ADHD, Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism, Down Syndrome, Dyspraxia or PDD".