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Assistive Technology Tool

An assistive technology tool “helps students with disabilities participate successfully in

school activities to meet individualized education program goals” (Winslow et al., 2017, p.41).

An emerging assistive technology tool that I consider cutting edge for implementation with

specific learners with disabilities is Read&Write. This tool provides students with dyslexia, deaf

or hard of hearing and other similar learning disabilities to be equal participants in learning

experiences in the general education classroom.

Read&Write is more effective than past practices because it can “offer a range of

powerful support tools to help students gain confidence with reading, writing, studying and

research” (Google, 2021, para 3). One of my favorite tools provided by Read&Write to help

make learning easier for students with dyslexia is the screen masking tool. Screen masking

“provides customizable ways to tint your whole screen using a reading light line that follows

your mouse pointer, use a color overlay, use a color overline or underline”(Texthelp, 2021 ,p.1).

This feature alone can help make the surrounding text less distracting while the line guides help

improve focus while reading. This assistive technology tool can also make reading and

interacting with text a dynamic learning experience. This tool allows students to do things like

listen to documents read aloud while highlighting words along the way, provides text and picture

dictionaries of words, simplify and summarize text on web pages to remove ads or other

distracting objects on the page. Some more of the premium features are speech prediction which

will help enrich the writing, vocab list will save words to a personal glossary, and check it will

check for spelling and grammar. By offering students with disabilities a wide range of support

provided in Read&Write tool it will help allow them to understand and engage with the content
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alongside peers. Due to more and more schools moving to digital resources this tool will also

help increase 1:1 participation for all students.

This tool has a very easy installation process. First, you would go to texthelp.com and

click on products. From there you would click on Read&Write. You would then click on Try

Read&Write. You will need to make sure you choose what browser you will be using it on. Some

of the options are chrome, windows and mac. A purple puzzle icon will then appear on the

browser toolbar. You will click on it when you want to use it and a toolbar will appear. The tool

bar gives you several icons that have different commands.

The cost for this tool depends on who it is that is using the tool and what they are using it

for. Teachers have free access to the premium toolbar. If an individual student was trying to

purchase the premium toolbar it would cost them $145 per year. If a school district was

purchasing the premium tool it would cost them $1.80 per student but it states on their website

that if you reach 25,000 to contact their sales department for pricing tiers. Read&Write can also

be used in higher education programs as well but you would have to contact sales to ask about

pricing. With these prices you get access to all premium features, access across all platforms,

training, onboarding and support as well as multi-product and multi-year discounts.

For technical support, users can visit texthelp.com and click on tech support. There are

different question headings that you can choose from for your related problem or you can even

contact them with the specific problem. If you are a student using Read&Write through the

district, the district IT department would be the ones to handle maintenance and technical issues

whether it be by working alongside Read&Write or not. There is no maintenance required for

this assistive technology tool other than updating the tool. Due to Read&Write constantly
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evolving with the technology around, you will receive updates every 4-6 weeks. The updates

include things from small bug fixes, new features and major enhancements.
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References

Google. (2021, May 17). Read&Write for Google Chrome™. Google.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readwrite-for-google-chro/inoeonmfapjbbkmd

afoankkfajkcphgd/related?hl=en-US.

Texthelp Ltd. (2021). Read&Write for Google Chrome Learning Resources. Texthelp.

https://www.texthelp.com/en-gb/resources/training/read-write/google-chrome/.

Texthelp. (2021). Read&Write for Google Chrome™ Support Tools for Students with Dyslexia

1.21.

https://texthelp-website-proof.cdn.prismic.io/texthelp-website-proof/965715db-f09d-465

b-bb38-524179c8e2db_Read%26Write+for+Google+Chrome+Support+Tools+for+Stude

nts+with+Dyslexia.pdf.

Winslow, J., Dickerson, J., & Lee, C. (2017). Applied technologies for teachers. [VitalSource

Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781524936600/