Disabilities services administrators at Greenfield Community College in Massachusetts, University of Connecticut and Landmark College in Vermont recommend the following assistive technology for students with executive dysfunction:
- Read & Write software makes websites, documents and files more accessible. It’s an intuitive toolbar that assists students with everyday tasks such as reading text aloud, understanding unfamiliar words, research and proofreading.
- Text-to-speech software, available in several brands, turns spoken words into text faster than people can type. Students can dictate and edit documents through speech.
- Fact-Mapper helps people organize facts visually on screen.
- Inspiration is a visual writing mapping software with templates to guide students’ writing, such as compare-and-contrast essays.
- Livescribe Smartpens are designed to work and write like a ballpoint pen; the Livescribe 3 smartpen uses “Bluetooth Smart” to send whatever is written to a smartphone or tablet.
- Echo Smartpen records what students write, hear or say. Students whose notes stopped at a particular point because of distraction can touch the pen to a spot in their notes and rehear what was missed.
- Evernote is an app designed to help people stay organized. Students can add text, images, audio, scanned documents and files to a notebook, synchronize everything across devices, and then later find anything via a search engine feature that recognizes text inside files and images.
- Notability for iPhone, iPad or Macs allows users to combine handwriting, photos and typing in a single note, and to edit annotate PDFs and organize notes so they can be retrieved when needed.
- Digital textbooks may allow students to hear text while they’re reading.
- Pomodoro online timers can be set for 25 minutes of work and five-minute breaks. Frequent breaks can improve mental agility.
