TY - JOUR
T1 - Assistive Software Tools for Secondary-Level Students with Literacy Difficulties
AU - Lange, Alissa A.
AU - McPhillips, Martin
AU - Mulhern, Gerry
AU - Wylie, Judith
N1 - The present study assessed the compensatory effectiveness of four assistive software tools (speech synthesis, spellchecker, homophone tool, and dictionary) on literacy. Secondary- level students ( N = 93) with reading difficulties completed computer-based tests of literacy skills. Training on their respective software followed for those assigned to the Assistive Software and the Microsoft Word Control groups.
PY - 2006/6/1
Y1 - 2006/6/1
N2 - The present study assessed the compensatory effectiveness of four assistive software tools (speech synthesis, spellchecker, homophone tool, and dictionary) on literacy. Secondary- level students ( N = 93) with reading difficulties completed computer-based tests of literacy skills. Training on their respective software followed for those assigned to the Assistive Software and the Microsoft Word Control groups. Posttests revealed an improvement for the Assistive Software group on reading comprehension, homophone error detection, spelling error detection, and word meanings. The Microsoft Word Control group also improved on spelling error detection and word meanings, but performed worse on homophone error detection. A Full Control group showed no significant improvements on any of the measures. Overall, results indicate a significant assistive value of the four software tools (from the software package Read & Write Gold, 2002) across several domains of literacy.
AB - The present study assessed the compensatory effectiveness of four assistive software tools (speech synthesis, spellchecker, homophone tool, and dictionary) on literacy. Secondary- level students ( N = 93) with reading difficulties completed computer-based tests of literacy skills. Training on their respective software followed for those assigned to the Assistive Software and the Microsoft Word Control groups. Posttests revealed an improvement for the Assistive Software group on reading comprehension, homophone error detection, spelling error detection, and word meanings. The Microsoft Word Control group also improved on spelling error detection and word meanings, but performed worse on homophone error detection. A Full Control group showed no significant improvements on any of the measures. Overall, results indicate a significant assistive value of the four software tools (from the software package Read & Write Gold, 2002) across several domains of literacy.
UR - https://doi.org/10.1177/016264340602100302
U2 - 10.1177/016264340602100302
DO - 10.1177/016264340602100302
M3 - Article
VL - 21
JO - Journal of Special Education Technology
JF - Journal of Special Education Technology
ER -