Dyslexia in children

Here are some recommendations for some text-to-speech programs which will allow your computer to read to a student. A program that I often use on my computer is TextAloud, www.nextup.com ($50 with the voices). This program can read any text in any Windows program. It also comes with an Internet Explorer or Firefox plug-in which can help you read webpages. I find it is the best program for reading webpages.

I can also recommend that you might want to look at the programs available from Premier Assistive, www.readingmadeeasy.com . Although not as elegant as Kurzweil 3000 Premier Assistive has a program called Scan and Read Pro-($150). Scan and Read Pro-is a scanning/reading, audio book creation and word processing program which has a built-in dictionary and great word prediction. A number of school districts use their software. They have a grant program that allows school districts get their software for free. So if your district says they have no money for software this is a good bet to help them get some assistive software for LB students.

The Cadillac of scanning and reading programs is Kurzweil 3000 ($1500). A number of school districts use this program. www.Kurzweiledu.com . The nice thing about Kurzweil 3000 is the page that is to be read looks exactly like the page in the book. It has study skills and a simple word processor.

Speech recognition software is very helpful with the writing process. Speech recognition software allows you to dictate to your computer and the computer does the typing, as well as, the spelling. The two best speech recognition systems today are Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5, www.nuance.com , and Microsoft’s new operating system Vista. Microsoft Vista has speech recognition built into the operating system. Both of these approaches to speech recognition are 99% accurate in turning dictation into written text.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Microsoft Vista both only take about 10 minutes to train the software to recognize your voice. Both Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Microsoft Vista come in different levels. The speech recognition is identical between the different levels of each eacha software system. So paying more money will not provide you with more accurate speech recognition. I am using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 to dictate this message to you.

It takes a while to get used to dictating to your computer. It took me a year to become really proficient at dictating and learning all of the commands to control my computer by voice. I’m really glad that I took the time to learn how to run speech recognition. Speech recognition is the most exciting thing that you can do on the computer today.

Jim Nuttall — Michigan
Dictated with speech recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.1.
www.geocities.com/jnuttallphd

Check out my website for some additional information on dyslexia and tips to go to college.
www.geocities.com/jnuttallphd

Also feel free to e-mail me if you have more questions.
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