"Voice Access" for those with disabilities, for everyone

Technology and Learning Colleagues,

This brief article about Google's Voice Access makes me wonder how adult learners with reading or other disabilities may already be using Google Assistant or Siri, and whether or not adult basic skills teachers are learning -- and teaching -- all their students, not just those with disabilities, how to use these features.

Google's Voice Access looks to me like a promising Universal Design for Learning feature that may benefit those with situational or permanent disabilities -- and perhaps everyone.

Your thoughts?

David J. Rosen

Moderator, Technology and Learning CoP

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

Comments

I have a gentleman in his late 50s that is just now reaching out to learn how to read. He has been fluent in oral language all of his life, but the written word has been beyond him. Although he was not computer literate, he welcomed the idea of trying an experiment. I set up his computer and his phone and poof, his world expanded and he embraced it like a kid in a candy store. 

Using Google Chrome's many text to voice tools available (for free), he can now have most any content on the Internet read to him. He has found that reading today's news at different levels (see the site newsela) and running though sight words have helped him a great deal in reading His phone now has similar set ups for reading. The build in voice to text in all Google applications has helped him believe his stories can get to print. With his permission, I often just hit the voice record in a google doc and engage him in a story with the screen turned away. When he is done sharing his story we edit the transcription together. As a side benefit, his enunciation in speech has started to improve, but he is still from Down East Maine (this is not my student by the way) so miracles on diction are not expected :) 

We use many other non-digital methods for learning to read and write, but the Google technology has inspired him to taste and sample many of the things he feels he has been missing his entire life. After 3 months of meeting with me only 2 hours  a week, he is now reading fluently at a 3rd grade level without technology. He is so proud he has been able to start a journey he has not imagined possible all of his life.