Category Archives: Dexterity and Mobility

Assistant App for organising your time with voice rather than typing

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assistant appSandra sent an email about her work with links to her TeachTapin blog and there she mentioned her use of iPads and an iPhone   “Assistant App is a great new app powered by the Nuance voice technology used for Dragon and other applications.   It allows you to organise your time by way of a calendar with all dates and events now added by voice recording. As a dyslexic it allows me to take ownership in planning my time but also means that others can set me reminders.  Hearing a voice relay the information to me is a great help.”
Assistant App in the Apple store  £1.49 on this date – 50% off for a limited time.  There is a free Android ‘Assistant’ app that also works with voice but is mainly for opening other apps, answering questions etc.
Sandra Fox TeachTapin blog

Use different TTS voices and use Siri for sending text messages

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“I use different voices for my text to speech and I use Siri to send notes to lecturers as an instant message (SMS).  It is the flexibility of the iPhone that is so good – you can multitask using several tools at once.”

Karima – sent via the strategy form

However, there can be some problems when ‘Trying to Use Siri to Text Message‘ as this YouTube video illustrates!

Academic phrasebook to aid writing

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This could save the day when you cannot think what to write in certain parts of an assignment or dissertation –  the University of Manchester has an Academic Phrasebank.

It is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological “nuts and bolts” of writing organised under the headings to the left. It was designed primarily with international students whose first language is not English in mind. However, if you are a native speaker writer, you may still find parts of the material helpful.

academic phrasebank

Thanks to Andy McMahon 

 

Opera browser has handy mouse gestures

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“I use Opera rather than Internet Explorer to go back a page – right click and a left click, straight one after the other, that makes going back so much easier! Not using Alt / L & R Arrow. I also used Firefox a bit, but Opera is much nicer. You have to do right click followed by left click very quickly!”

” I prefer the layout so much more and the keyboard and mouse shortcuts are so useful. For instance I use right click followed by left click to go back a web page or just the z key.” The YouTube video below illustrates what is possible with mouse gestures.

I find the automatic reloading of a page useful when working on forums which you can customise to however many minutes or seconds you want. Opera also allows you to add your chosen search engines as part of the menu. There is also a function called ‘speed dial’ that provides you with your 4 most important web sites”

Chloe – Psychology

iSoton app for bus timetable, campus map and lecture timetable.

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soton iPhone app“I use the free university iPhone bus timetable and map app when I am in a hurry and need to find my way about.  It also has my timetable and modules.”

Nicole  – Engineering

Dim screen for note taking in lectures

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“A problem of using a laptop in class can be the light given off by the laptop’s display. I found sitting at the back of the class stopped a lot of this unwanted attention, but this also had the disadvantage that you might not be able to see/hear what the lecturer was saying. Instead, I found a simple remedy which is free. 99% of laptops have the ability to dim the screen’s brightness, either by using the function keys (FN + F6 & F7 on some laptops) or from the graphics display properties available in control panel – under the display settings. Some laptops also offer dimming as part of the Power options in Windows.

Dim laptop screen

Dim laptop screen

By dimming the screen you will reduce glare – reducing eyestrain, reduce unwanted attention and will also save your laptops batteries from being drained – advantages all round!”

Jim –  Information Technology in Organisations