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Check our COVID-19 Guide for updates on Library services and resources.

Disability Resources

Committed to providing an accessible learning environment to all our students.

NOTETAKING APP

To help you take notes from online classes over the coming months, Red Deer College will provide you with free access to a note-taking app called Glean until August 31st, 2020. Glean runs in a Google Chrome web browser on Windows, Mac or Chromebook, which is very easy to use and may prove invaluable to your studies for the remainder of the academic year. Please contact Disability Resources to set up your user account. https://rdc.libguides.com/disabilityservices

Get started with Glean from Sonocent on Vimeo.

BLIND & LOW VISION

Students who experience blindness or low vision may find this software helpful.

The term “blindness” covers a broad spectrum of visual disability, from when your sight is impaired enough to interfere with daily activities like reading, cooking or driving, up to total blindness. ... retinal diseases like macular degeneration create distortion or blind spots in the central vision. Low vision is the term used to describe significant visual impairment that can't be corrected fully with glasses, contact lenses, medication or eye surgery. 

ZoomText is the industry standard and leader for screen magnification and speech supported computer access for computer users who have low vision. ZoomText is available free of charge for personal computers at home, until June 30, 2020, as a response to the COVID crisis.

This offer is available to every household in the US and Canada. That includes not just post-secondary, high school or elementary students, but any blind or low vision user in any household in North America.

If you or you know an individual who needs sight enhancement or sight substitution technology at home please see the Freedom Scientific tab for access details.

JAWS is the industry standard and leader for screen-free text-to-speech computer access for blind computer users.  JAWS is available free of charge for personal computers at home, until June 30, 2020, as a response to the COVID crisis. 

This offer is available to every household in the US and Canada. That includes not just post-secondary, high school or elementary students, but any blind or low vision user in any household in North America.

If you or you know an individual who needs sight enhancement or sight substitution technology at home please see the Freedom Scientific tab for access details.

Fusion combines ZoomText and JAWS and delivers even more as the feature-rich solution for individuals or organizations that need the maximum sight enhancement and sight substitution supports for computer access.

These leading assistive technology apps for low vision or blind users -- are available free of charge for personal computers at home, until June 30, 2020 as a response to the COVID crisis. This offer is available to every household in the US and Canada.

That includes not just post-secondary, high school or elementary students, but any blind or low vision user in any household in North America.

Please view the five Fusion training videos by clicking the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk-npwu4WEBSwNNSROcuZZnsI-ElqsLCT

These leading assistive technology apps for low vision or blind users -- are available free of charge for personal computers at home, until June 30, 2020 as a response to the COVID crisis. This offer is available to every household in the US and Canada. That includes not just post-secondary, high school or elementary students, but any blind or low vision user in any household in North America.

If you or you know an individual who needs sight enhancement or sight substitution technology at home CLICK HERE or share this link to get access to these solutions at home:https://portal.freedomscientific.com/SponsoredSoftware.

In the prompt Freedom Scientific makes reference to college/university email addresses, however, you can sign-up without being affiliated with a post-secondary institution.

Free subscription for at-home use until June 30, 2020.  Online support is offered to install and for training.  The student clicks on the link below and it takes him/her to the request. https://portal.freedomscientific.com/SponsoredSoftware

 

TEXT TO SPEECH

Students who may have difficulty reading, pronouncing, identifying or comprehending words or a string of words, may find text to speech helpful. 

Students with dyslexia/learning disabilities who struggle with reading ie. the reading difficulty is caused by problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and use in word decoding, text to speech provides listening to written words and speech sounds through a read-aloud function. It improves the ability to focus, retain information and improve comprehension, and is also helpful when you suffer from eye fatigue as you can sit, relax and listen.

Students from Red Deer College can download the Read&Write installer using the link below:
https://www.texthelp.com/en-us/products/read-write/read-write-for-education/

Click the try Read&Write today button, select the platform (PC, MAC or Google Chrome) and then click Install. Once Read&Write is installed and opened, sign in when prompted with your school email address with Microsoft. 

Additional help and resources can be found in the TextHelp Training Portal.

 

Free subscription for use during the COVID crisis.  Training and installation support included by the makers of Kurzweil. Click the link for a video demonstration and to sign up for a free subscription. Sign up does not require affiliation with a post-secondary institution.  The student is supported by Kurzweil. https://go.kurzweiledu.com/news/covid-19

Natural Reader is a downloadable text-to-speech desktop software for personal use. This easy-to-use software with natural-sounding voices can read to you any text such as Microsoft Word files, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails.

Download NaturalReader at https://www.naturalreaders.com/software.html.

SPEECH TO TEXT

Students who have difficulty with spelling, getting your ideas on paper or physical difficulty typing, may find speech to text software helpful.

Speech to text is very useful. It is very empowering to people who, because of dysgraphia or dyslexia, have a very hard time writing even simple sentences when they want to tell a much bigger story. It can be very useful for people who are searching on the Internet.

In college, using speech to text to successfully write something as complex as a paper requires quite a bit of executive functioning. Planning out the sequence of your ideas, and speaking in complete, fluent sentences is difficult. And because speech to text doesn’t always “understand” what you mean, for all ages, you definitely need to have a text to speech program, or some kind of playback functionality to read your work back to you to make sure it says what you wanted it to!

Students from Red Deer College can download the Read&Write installer using the link below:
https://www.texthelp.com/en-us/products/read-write/read-write-for-education/

Click the try Read&Write today button, select the platform (PC, MAC or Google Chrome) and then click Install. Once Read&Write is installed and opened, sign in when prompted with your school email address with Microsoft. 

Additional help and resources can be found in the TextHelp Training Portal.

Speech to Text (speech recognition) Windows 10 – in Control Panel under Ease of Access on your pc:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-speech-recognition-windows-10