Assistive technologies can be a game changer for students with learning disabilities/differences as they struggle to master grade-level content and concepts. Redford gives examples from her classroom of how tools like audio books with text-to-speech features and even simple predictive spelling apps enable students with reading or writing…

Persons with visual impairment have consistently shown a preference for one alternative reading format over another, often because of factors outside their control. This study adopted survey research design to investigate alternative format preferences among secondary school visually impaired students, focusing on Southwestern Nigeria. Using total…

Tape Assisted Reading Programmes (TARPs), and more recently, other forms of audio recorded stories, have been used in New Zealand schools to help students with reading difficulties. Many claims are made about the positive effects of such programmes on general reading ability and progress. However, this paper, informed by research, states that such…

This study was conducted to explore the experiences of Malaysian secondary students with visual impairments in using digital talking textbooks (DTTs) to assist their learning. Data were obtained from individual in-depth interviews. An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to understand the findings and confirm the emergent…

This paper describes how digital talking books (DTBs) with embedded functionality for learners can be generated from content structured according to the OU OpenLearn schema. It includes examples showing how a software transformation developed from open source components can be used to remix OpenLearn content, and discusses issues concerning the…

ALI is a project to develop an archive for talking books produced by the Swedish universities. The universities produce talking books from the mandatory literature for students with reading disabilities, including mostly journal articles, book chapters and texts written by teachers. The project group consists of librarians and co-ordinators for…

More recent motivational research focuses on the identification of effective techniques for enhancing instructional design and meeting the needs of diverse student populations (Wlodkowski R. J., 1981). Learning-motivation researchers are applying some of the same theories and concepts found to be effective in industry to the development of…