What is AT (Assistive Technology)?
Assistive technology (AT) includes any tools that help people with differences work around challenges, and can make various activities or tasks accessible in different settings. In college, AT can help students with disabilities enhance their learning, studying, and communication.
Check out this article on understood.org for more information on high and low-tech devices and services that can help support your learning.
Helpful AT to support reading
- Graphic organizers: visual tools that help you keep track of information as you read. Graphic organizers can be digital or pen-and-paper.
- Optical character recognition(OCR): reads text from pictures and image files, and can be used with paper texts or documents by scanning or taking photos of them.
- Text-to-speech technology (TTS): helps you see text and hear it read at the same time. TTS can work with any digital text, and is read by computer-generated voices.
- Audiobooks and digital test-to-speech books: read books out loud, and generally use human voices.
- Annotation tools: help you take notes and write comments while reading.
- Display control: changes the font, font size, color, and spacing of text on screens.
- Dictionary: lets you look up words you do not understand when reading.
Find AT for reading
- Desktop and laptop computers typically have built-in AT options, including text-to-speech. You can download AT software programs for reading to add more functions to your computer.
- Mobile devices also have built-in AT. You can add more reading tools to mobile devices with apps.
- Chromebooks and the Chrome browser also have built-in AT; you can add Chrome apps and extensions to help you with reading on-screen.
- Bookshare is an excellent source for free digital text-to-speech books, with the largest online library of accessible reading materials.
Who can I contact for more information?
Accessibility Services works closely with Information Technology Support to help students access assistive technology that fits their needs. For more information, please contact us: [email protected]