This is the homepage for my AT of the Week project

AT of the Week is a simple idea

Each week Ill try to hunt around the web and fine a free or opensource Assistive Technology Solution. If I can host it Ill store it and provide a link to it on this page. Sometimes that will link to third party sites where you can safely download the solution from.

If you like the idea - let  me and others know - all Input would be great

Otomata is a generative sequencer. It employs a cellular automaton type logic devised to produce sound events.

Each alive cell has 4 states: Up, right, down, left. at each cycle, the cells move themselves in the direction of their internal states. If any cell encounters a wall, it triggers a pitched sound whose frequency is determined by the xy position of collision, and the cell reverses its direction. If a cell encounters another cell on its way, it turns itself clockwise.

Its a great online tool for create musical sequences and samples for people with learning disabilities and works well with a touch screen

Play with it at http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata

All of the past AT's of the week are now on this page

Click on a link to find the AT

NVDA - Screen Reader

VuBar - Aid for Reading

XMind - Mindmapping Utility

EyeGlasses for Iphone - Portable Magnifier

My Study Bar - Literacy Support Tool

Click N Type - On Screen Keyboard

Sonar - Support for finding the cursor

Screen Tinter Lite - Change screen colours to aid literacy

AMIS - Daisy Book Reader

Tweet by thumb - Switch access to Twitter

We are working on making the AT of the week available as a seprate RSS feed from wider information. watch this space for further details

Access to reading material is prtty important and the limitations of buying books that only work on one sytem can be frustrating. Calibre have developed this website that offers low cost books that will work on all platform - worth a look

To Browse books go to http://drmfree.calibre-ebook.com/ 

The Fix the Web love heart button on the ATbar allows you to easily report accessibility issues from your browser as you find them.

The ATbar is set up by the addition of a simple bookmark in your browser. When you click the bookmark (bookarks are called favourites on IE), the toolbar opens and you can use the Fix the Web heart button to report websites. When you find yourself on a website with accessibility issues, click the bookmark, then the Fix the Web love heart button. A form will pop up that you can quickly fill out and one of our volunteers will deal with your issue.

Ingeniously designed, the ATBar also incorporates text-resize, Text to Speech, style and reference setting buttons.

Download the toolbar from http://www.fixtheweb.net/toolbar

• Works entirely over email
• If your email is accessible so is facebook !
• Nothing to download or install
• Optimized for mobile devices
• Supports international languages

Free to sign up at http://thefriendmail.com/

Pet-n-Punch is a novel exergame inspired by whack-a-mole. Help a farmer protect its fields of carrots by bopping varmints on their head..... but make sure not to hit any kitties! This game you can play with either one or two Wii remotes. This game gives you a much higher workout than our other two exergames (bowling / tennis). Download Pet-n-Punch.

Full Measure ClipTalk automatically speaks text that is copied to the Windows clipboard (e.g. with Right Click -> Copy or Ctrl+C).

Speech is supplied using the Microsoft SAPI software that is included with WIndows XP and Vista. SAPI may also be installed on Windows 98 with SAPI Text To Speech (TTS) components [12MB] (this will also install 2 additional free voices, Mike and Mary, on XP).

Special tags can be added to the text to influence how sections are spoken, for example to select a voice or alter pitch.

ClipTalk can also be used to add speech to any program or macro facility that can copy text to the clipboard.

Download from the full measure website

Accessible PDF is a free program from Claro Software that lets you customise the colours and fonts whilst reading a PDF and is able to read the text aloud with other programs such as ClaroRead. You can zoom in and out, use high- or low-contrast colours, and save your PDF as text or a web page for future use. You can also follow internal contents links to let you navigate the document

Accessible PDF Reader is available here

A.I.type “understands” what users are typing and offers word and sentence completion that help the user type just a minimal number of letters. A.I.type's smart prediction algorithms maintain the context and the meaning of the text, while making typing easier, faster and better, with the correct grammar, syntax and spirit.

You can download AI type from http://www.aitype.com/

Enable Viacam (aka eViacam) is a mouse replacement software that moves the pointer as you move your head. It works on standard PCs equipped with a web camera. No additional hardware is required. Based on the award winning Facial Mouse software

Download it from here

The Accessibility Foundation proudly presents the beta release of the Audio Game Maker, a free application which enables visually impaired people to make their own sound-based computer games. The Audio Game Maker is part of Game Accessibility.com, a series of activities conducted by the Accessibility foundation in order to improve the accessibility of computer games for players with impairments.

Audio Game Maker aims to increase the number of computer games for the visually impaired, since very few accessible computer games exist. Many visually impaired players want to create their own games but give up when confronted with programming difficulties and other technical issues. Creative players manage to modify existing games with their own recorded sounds in order to make 'new' games. Despite these efforts, there is a huge demand for an accessible tool that enables visually impaired people to make computer games. Audio Game Maker aims to be a solution for this problem by offering a simple and accessible game building environment.

Audio Game Maker is part of project Game Accessibility, a series of activities conducted by the Accessibility foundation in order to improve the accessibility of computer games for players with impairments. Accessibility has been researching the accessibility of computer games over the past few years, and participated in the development of two games for the blind: Drive, an audio racing game, and Demor, a location-based audio-augmented reality game.

Download Audiogame Maker here

Download the sound library for non-commercial usage [135 mb]

Probably my favourite selection of games in one bundle, 2006 was the year it all seemed to come together just right. Admittedly with all the usual compo hassles but who cares when you end up with a bunch of wonderful, wonderful games?

Contents: 2nd Encounter, 3D Construction Kit, Archaist, Asteroids v.2, Asteroids, Balloon Fight XP, Bezerk 3d, Bezerker Bots, Bombzuka, Bullet Train, Choplifter, Chronos, City Defence, Clockwiser, CounterClockWise (Knot In 3d), Demon Attack, Dig Dug Aftershock, Donkey Kong Arcade, Donkey Kong Jnr XP, Drelbs, Endurance Kaboom, Fame Quest, Formation Zero, Froggy Ribbit, Ghostbusters, Ghouls & Ghosts Remix, Great Britain Limited, Green Beret, Gridfire, Gumball, HERO, Highway Encounter, Implausible Mission, Kastle Kumquat, Kirby's Dreamland, Kornonis Rift, Labra Tetris, Lady Bug, Metal Sector, Millenium, Montezuma's Revenge, Nemesis, One Step Beyond, Panther, Poster Paster, Project Firestart, Quantum Fighter, Rise Out, Robotron, Rock N Bolt, Serioux, Shooting Gallery, Sky Ranger, Snake 3d, Solar Striker, Space Fortress, Spiky Harold, Star Wars, Start Wars, Super Mario Land Plus, Superkid Returns, TANK, The Goonies, The Life Of A Fish, The Pyramid,The Run, Traffic 2006, Tubopac, Twilight Treasures, Venture Into Adventure, Willy Does Dallas (!), Wings Of Fury, Xaind Sleena, Zampa

Download from RetroRemakes

Canabalt is a fast-paced escape-oriented action game based on a single premise: "Outrun the demolition of your city with just one button!" It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so you can place it on your USB flash drive, iPod or portable hard drive and use it on any computer.

http://portableapps.com/apps/games/canabalt_portable

ATbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help students customise the way they view and interact with web pages to help their study skills.

The concept behind ATbar is simple: One toolbar to provide all of the functionality you would usually get in many different products, and which will run in any desktop web browser.

There are two versions of ATbar available:

1. If you are a user, you have a choice of either installing the Lite bookmarklet version that can be accessed with one click in your browser, or a full install which will load automatically for every page.
2. If you manage a website, you are able to embed ATbar Lite into a link on your website, which will allow your visitors to utilise ATbar, without installation. For more information, please see the versions page otherwise please visit the downloads page to start using the toolbar. The functions menu privides simple instructions for use.

Full details and downloads from http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ToolBar/

Serotek has teamed up with the AIR Foundation (Accessibility is a Right) to offer a web-resident version of our screen reader to users completely free of charge, making any computer with internet accessible in seconds. Simply visit www.satogo.com and create your free SA ToGo account. Once you are logged in, use the Install System Access option under My Account in the System Access menu.

Create&Convert is a free tool that can take documents in common electronic formats (like MS Office, Open Office etc) and turn them into ‘epubs’ or talking books. In very simple terms it’s a suite of free software tools that learning providers can use to support learners who are print-impaired, experience difficulties with reading or who prefer to access content in a flexible and multi-sensory format.

Download the two versions from www.eduapps.org

Turn your iPhone and iPod touch into a universal remote for all of your favorite Mac & PC apps. Pause iTunes. Fast forward commercials in Media Center. Advance PowerPoint & Keynote slides. Even control web apps like Gmail and Pandora!

With the latest update, HippoRemote Pro is also a Game Controller for your Mac & PC games, freeing you to relax, lean back and get away from your desk.

HippoRemote also features a full keyboard and multi-touch trackpad. The integrated web browser and native Twitter client let you multitask without switching apps and interrupting what's playing on your computer.

Download HippoRemote here or search in iTunes

VisualMouse translates user's head motion into the motion of the cursor on the screen, by processing the image from a PC video-conference camera. This is what VisualMouse does as a pointing device. VisualMouse can also function as a gesture recognition device - mouse clicks and user-defined commands are activated by head gestures. For example, the user can define 4 commands, and then use head gestures to give the commands, freeing the hands for other things. The gestures are the turns of the head: left-and-back,right-and-back, up-and-back, down-and-back

Download VisualMouse from this website

According to their website Blio reader promises to be the new touchstone for the presentation of electronic books & magazines. Stunning, full-color pages come alive in brilliant 3D. Even image-rich books are now at your digital fingertips — because Blio preserves a book’s original layout, fonts, and graphics.

Its released on 28th september and you can sign up now for information. Its of some interest because its created by KNFB with their commitment to print impaired users

Find out more and download from 28th september by visiting http://www.blioreader.com/

Starting iZoom Web is very simple. Surf to http://www.issist.com. If you do this for the first time your WebBrowser will ask you for permission to install an Activex control. An ActiveX control is a kind of addition to your WebBrowser. Because Iisist Inc is a trustworthy company we allow installation.
The next time you visit the iZoom Web page, iZoom Web will start immediately.

After installation of the activex control, iZoom Web is changing your color depth to 16 bit and 2x full screen magnification with speech support enabled, starts by default. This change of color depth is done because of performance reasons. In 32 bit color depth iZoom Web performs too slow.

After iZoom Web is launched, you have access to all applications on the computer you are working on. Web-based does not mean, that the iZoom Web only runs in you WebBrowser. It runs the same way a desktop screen magnifier like ZoomText does. You can start your e-mail program, write a document in Microsoft Word, view a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or browse the Internet.

iZoom Web is in the memory of your computer, so you can also use hotkeys to change magnification or turn magnification on and off.

iZoomWeb is available at this site

LetMeType

This simple and highly configurable word prediction software can increase typing speeds significantly. It is possible to import words into the prediction software either from existing text files or via the clipboard – and the prediction is useful for those with spelling difficulties. It works in Microsoft® Word and all other programs which require text input.

Download the program at

Easy Speak is a keyboard based text to speech program for people who have difficulty speaking. It includes smart word and phrase prediction to help speed up text input that can then be spoken. It uses natural sounding text-to-speech British English Acapela voices: Lucy and Graham.

It runs on iPhone and iPad and costs 1.19 on iTunes

More information at http://www.farrellit.co.uk/easy-speak

Dragon Dictation, powered by Nuance’s world-renowned Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, allows you to stay connected all the time, even when your hands are busy.

With Dragon Dictation, you can text or email your friends, update your Facebook status, send notes and reminders to yourself, or tweet to the world, all using your voice.

Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking that allows you easily to speak and see your text or email messages on your iPad™, iPhone™ or iPod touch™ instantly.

With Dragon Dictation, you can text or email your friends, update your Facebook status, send notes and reminders to yourself, or tweet to the world, all using your voice.

So when you are on-the-go, turn talk into type with Dragon Dictation – from short text messages to longer email messages, and anything in between.

Download the free app from

http://www.dragonmobileapps.co.uk/

PowerTalk 1.2.11
Automatic speech for PowerPoint presentations.

PowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows.

You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic 'Text To Speech' programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.

Speech is provided by the synthesised computer voices that are provided with Windows 7, Vista and XP, and other voices are available. PowerTalk uses PowerPoint supplied with Microsoft Office to show the presentation.

Download PowerTalk at http://fullmeasure.co.uk/powertalk/#downloads

This is somethign a little diffrerent, weve put together a little collection of audiogames taken from the pages of audiogames.net that we've seen tried and tested with blind users in a social setting. Its not so much that they work  technically, more that they work so well for the kids playing them. Inlcuded here are VI tennis and VI Bowling which use a Wiimote to control the games on your PC

Have fun

Download for free from our file storage at

Audiogames download

Eldy  is the first easy to use software designed for the elderly, from the non-profit European Eldy’s organization. It is also extremely useful as a simple PC interface for people with a learning disability

Eldy allows seniors to use computers and to take part in the Internet revolution. It does this by providing a software that allows easy access to all the most important functions: e-mail (pop3 and imap), chat, Web browsing, weather, text editing, streaming and much more.

Download Eldy for free here

Week 15 - CameraMouse

Camera Mouse is a free program that enables you to control the mouse pointer on your computer screen just by moving your head.

To use Camera Mouse you need a Windows 7, Vista, or XP computer and a webcam.

Download CameraMouse from http://www.cameramouse.org/downloads/CameraMouse2010Installer.exe

Quite simply, this replaces the standard mouse pointer with an enormous mouse pointer. Useful for children or anyone with difficulty tracking the mouse pointer. Changing colours or exiting is achieved by clicking the icon in the Notification area, close to the system clock.

Download Enormouse at http://www.fxc.btinternet.co.uk/EnorMouseSetup.exe

Although Ghotit is a paif for piece of software it has two options that make it suitable for inclusion

1 There is a free network version availabel to schools and colleges

2 There is a free online spellchecker which is pretty good

 3 The commercial softwae is cheap !

Ghotit offers a unique context spellchecker. Ordinary spellcheckers do not take into account the context of the sentence the word is being used. The context of a sentence can be leveraged to assist in the following:

Severe Spelling Error Correction

In the world of spellchecking, the degree of how badly a word is misspelled is measured by the editing distance of the misspelled word to the intended word. The tradeoff is as follows: the longer the editing distance, the longer the list of candidate words that will be offered. Since ordinary spellcheckers can not properly grade the long list of alternatives, this long list is seen as adding "noise" to the spellchecking algorithm. Ordinary spellcheckers are tuned for people with mild spelling and typing mistakes, and therefore prefer to offer a relatively short editing distance in order to minimize the list of candidate words.

Download from http://www.ghotit.com/home.shtml

A free, open source, screen magnifier, for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X.

Virtual Magnifying Glass is a free, open source, cross-platform screen magnification tool. It is simple, customizable, and easy-to-use.

Vmg3.4_install.exe for Windows 2000+ size: 2.5 MB
magnifier-3.3.2-1.i586.rpm Linux RPM size: 1.4 MB
magnifier_3.2.2-0_i386.deb Linux DEB size: 5.8 MB
magnifier-freebsd-3.3.1.tar.bz2 for FreeBSD size: 1.2 MB
Magnifier.app.zip for Mac OS X size: 1.5 MB

Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the web more enjoyable by removing all the clutter around what you are reading. 

The software can be downloaded from

 http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Readability - Installation Video for Firefox, Safari & Chrome from Arc90 on Vimeo.