I agree that many students could benefit from screen readers, but what schools or organizations are making the purchase. I have used the good ole low tech tape recorder for years.  Students who can read often benefit from listening to what they have read or what has been said in class. If you have a good reader who is an auditory learner, suggest that this person record the material, then make copies for the individual who does not read as well. Also, my adult students in ABE enjoyed reading aloud as a group at least once a week. This of course was voluntary and no one felt the need to read if they did not want to read aloud.
Concerning the issue of Adult Education Instructors providing accommodations...... some have no idea what you are talking about much less how to assess the student.Carol Allen 
Career Readiness Certification Director
Rowan Cabarrus Community College
PO Box 1595
Salisbury, NC 28145-1595
704-216-7210 office
704-202-7065 cell
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lucille Cuttler" <l.cuttler at comcast.net>
Sent 4/9/2008 2:03:23 PM
To: "The Learning Disabilities Discussion List" <learningdisabilities at nifl.gov>
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 1931] Re: Screen ReadersI appreciate the suggestions.   The struggling learner, regardless of age, benefits from technology and teaching approaches  proven to be effective.  Lucille Cuttler
  -----Original Message-----From: learningdisabilities-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:learningdisabilities-bounces at nifl.gov]On Behalf Of RKenyon721 at aol.comSent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 10:04 AMTo: learningdisabilities at nifl.govSubject: [LearningDisabilities 1930] Screen ReadersHi, As a follow up to Glenn's interesting discussion, I noticed that the Technology Discussion List (Moderator - Maryann Fedele) also picked up on his topic after a post by David Rosen. Here is a pertinent response that was just posted from the Technology List.  HI all,
It may be called a "text reader," but for computers, is often called a "screen reader." They all have their good points and not so great points, but the premise of having things read to assist with learning is one that is commonly used with kids in special education programs. There are a number of reading programs that highlight the words as the program reads the text as well.
Some vendors text readers include:
Don Johnston, Inc. http://www.donjohnston.com/
Intellitools: http://www.intellitools.com
These are, of course, primarily designed for school-aged children, but look closely for the tools that may be able to do what you want for adults. 
Write:Outloud and  Read: OutLoud are likely the programs that make the most sense and are very versatile - they operate within or like a word 
processor. I know a lot of people who use them who have learning 
disabilities. They are also electronically based.
I do know there are text readers that can read printed text, but I can't, 
for the life of me, remember the name of the one I have seen or find one 
quickly while writing this. They do exist - look in tools for people who 
are blind and visually impaired.
There are many different screen readers for computers while surfing the web and doing email.  Some of the more common are
JAWS: 
http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws.asp  (expensive)
One that I downloaded to use for a demonstration was free and very easy to use is:
http://www.screenreader.net/
As for the understandability of the more formal language often used in 
pamphlets and books, I would imagine it depends on the target audience. I believe there are many people who are very comfortable with formal 
language, but cannot read as well as those who will need the less formal 
approach. But being able to hear information - even if the language still 
needs to be decoded - is better than not being able to access the information at all!
If you have access to a search engine that can scour education journals, I 
would recommend a lit search for use of text readers, text-to-speech, and 
so on in journals for special education. This is a huge area for the folks 
in assistive technology and augmentative communication. I'm sure there are articles that can lay the groundwork or be generalized for further studies 
with people who do not have "disabilities."
Take care,
Joan
-----------------------------
Joan E Guthrie Medlen, R.D., L.D.
Clinical Advisor, Health Literacy & Communications
Special Olympics Healthy Athletesjoan at DownSyndromeNutrition.com   Based on the above, I would be interested in knowing how many of you use screen readers with adult education and literacy students that have a learning disability.  If so, please share with us....... Thanks, Rochelle   Rochelle Kenyon
Moderator, NIFL/LINCS Learning Disabilities Discussion List
Center for Literacy Studies at the University of TennesseeRKenyon721 at aol.com 
 
To post a message: Learningdisabilities at nifl.gov
 
To subscribe: http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/LearningDisabilities
 
To read archived messages:http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/learningdisabilities/2008/date.html
Planning your summer road trip? Check out AOL Travel Guides.----------------------------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Learning Disabilities mailing list
LearningDisabilities at nifl.gov
To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/learningdisabilities
Email delivered to allenc at rowancabarrus.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/learningdisabilities/attachments/20080410/c5f5e07b/attachment.html