Again, this is taken from the PowerPoint presentation by Dr Simon Ball, Senior Advisor, JISC TechDis Services (January 2008). Please note – wherever you are on the spectrum from ‘technically savvy’ to ‘a bit nervous of trying new things’, you should find something that works for you (hopefully)!
Instant Presenter
Instant Presenter is pay-per-use webcasting software. This screenshot shows the presenter’s webcam, slide or interactive whiteboard, list of participants and chat pane.
Audacity
- Free to download
- Simple route into making podcasts
- Can add introductory music etc simply to make a professional sounding podcast.
- Have been used as ‘backup’ for lectures, for additional material for listening in ‘dead time’ e.g. on buses, and for adding supporting material e.g. describing current news items of relevance to the curriculum
Camstudio (with subtitles via MovieMaker)
- Free to download
- Choose images to be used.
- Open Camstudio, define ‘recordable’ area, move cursor, add commentary.
- Save avi file.
- Open file in Windows MovieMaker (Start > Accessories>MovieMaker)
- Add subtitles.
- Et voila!
WINK
Wink is free Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
Helps you enter text. Running in the background, it analyses what you type. After some time it has collected enough information to guess a word after you have typed the first two or three letters. A list of the most probable words is displayed, and you can select one with a single keystroke or just continue typing.
- Word prediction and spell checking facility.
- You can import glossaries of technical terms, and it will learn words as you type.
DSpeech (scroll down the page to view)
- Allows electronic text to be converted into ‘automatic’ podcasts using a computerised voice.
- Computerised voices aren’t for everyone!
- But they do add a degree of flexibility for those who do not like or have difficulty with reading, or who want to listen whilst doing other things.
RoboBraille
- Simply email a Word document to one of their email addresses e.g. britspeech@robobraille.org
- You receive (normally about 5 minutes) a high quality synthetic speech MP3 to download.
- When the URL of your MP3 comes back be aware they always put a full stop at the end which stops it from working!
Xerte
- Xerte is a Learning Object Generator that is both accessible to use and produces accessible learning objects (if you use its features correctly!)
- You can download the latest version of the tool from http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/
- Guidance available at: http://www.techdis.ac.uk/community/course/view.php?id=86
Simulations:
not the real thing, but they give some idea of what it’s like
http://www.webaim.org/simulations/screenreader.php – simulation of using a screenreader
http://www.webaim.org/simulations/lowvision.php – low vision simulation
http://www.webaim.org/simulations/dyslexia.php – gives users an idea of the frustrations a person with dyslexia could experience while using the web.
http://www.webaim.org/simulations/distractability.php – this simulation demonstrates how difficult it can be to navigate even a simple site when operating under an intense cognitive load as someone with a cognitive disability might experience.