Assistive Technology for Writing

Some of my colleagues from the Academic Intervention Lab and I recently presented our lab’s new research on assistive technology (AT) for writing to the Council for Exceptional Children at their annual conference. We talked about AT for three specific writing deficits: graphomotor skills, idea generation and editing. We’ve been working on some research projects focused on voice recognition, idea generation, and editing assistance software to help students circumvent the aforementioned areas of challenge. Below are some highlights of our presentation and recommendations derived from our recent work. 

Voice recognition software, often called speech-to-text, allows the user to speak into a computer and records what the user says as text. This tool has been popular in the AT world for some time, but there are a number of challenges with implementing it into the regular classroom environment. When integrating voice recognition software it is important to provide students with a quiet space to work, as their speaking could be distracting to other students or even embarrassing for the student. The student must also be able to read what the program transcribes in order to make corrections or confirm that what they intended to write is on their computer screen. In cases where they have challenges with reading, teachers can consider layering voice recognition with text-to-speech software, which will read the text aloud to the student. One of the most difficult aspects of using voice recognition software is that many of the programs require students to speak out punctuation which can interrupt the flow of writing. Students must either be trained to speak out their punctuation, or proficient enough with editing their writing to add in the punctuation later. Many voice recognition tools are available for free, such as Google voice typing, and others are available within software suites, such as Read&Write for Google Chrome. 

Idea generation software allows a student to enter in keywords or headings and provides the student with related terms and ideas (ATSelect.org, 2018). These ideas are suggested to help students with getting into the flow of writing and combating the “white screen of death.” Empirical research on these tools is limited, but preliminary results out of our lab are promising. Some common idea generation software programs are ThoughtQ and WordStorm. 

Editing assistance tools check the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style of a written piece. It has been suggested that these programs are useful for English Language Learners (Leacock et al., 2010). Our recent research has focused on comparing Grammarly, Ginger, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs editing assistance feature to human raters for sentences written by ELLs. While we’re still in the process of writing up this manuscript for publication, we’ve found that it’s important to not only look at how many corrections the programs recommend but the quality of those recommendations. Some programs make many mistakes that change the meaning of the text! It’s therefore important to train students to review each recommended change the program makes to ensure they are not accepting corrections that actually decrease the quality of their writing. Further, we’ve found that the programs have a really hard time with severe spelling errors, so if the student’s spelling is really poor, it may be best to use voice recognition or one of the other recommended AT tools for spelling on ATSelect.org in combination with editing assistance software. 

Learn more on ATSelect.org! 

Reference

Leacock, C., Chodorow, M., Gamon, M., & Tetreault, J. (2010.) Automated Grammatical Error Detection for Language Learners. Morgan & Claypool Publishers.

ATSelect.org (2018). Idea generator. https://www.atselect.org/v2AssistiveTechnologies/Idea-Generator

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Bronwyn Lamond is a PhD student in School and Clinical Child Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on student and teacher perceptions of assistive technology. She works with Dr. Todd Cunningham in the Academic Intervention Lab, and co-produces a podcast called Accidental Intellectual focused on telling profoundly human stories of the humans behind the experts in health-related fields. In her spare time she like to sew, create, learn about sustainability, and spend time singing karaoke with her friends.