Screen reading and voice recognition (OSX and iOS)
VoiceOver
This is a screen-reader built-in to both OS X and iOS. It can help students who have difficulty reading, seeing or typing
by reading everything displayed on the screen out loud, including operating system components and document or website text.
Dictation
Students can produce text by speaking it instead of typing it – a feature beneficial for students who are young, dyslexic,
learning English or who have other special needs.
Text to speech
Students can highlight text to hear it read aloud or translate single words into a different language.
OS X
Parental Controls
Use this feature to keep students on task or restrict their access to the computer to specific times, apps, websites, interactions
with others or operating system actions.
Simple Finder
Activate this to provide a simplified view of the desktop, which can be useful for younger students or those with cognitive
and learning disabilities.
Word completion
Students can use this feature within the TextEdit and Pages apps to aid vocabulary and word-building skills. Students type
a few letters then press the Escape key to see word suggestions.
Summarise
This feature summarises highlighted text to help students understand the main concepts.
Unique account preferences
Create different student accounts with unique preferences to support the needs of a variety of students with the same computer.
iOS
Guided Access
Temporarily limit student access to a single app. Use a passcode to exit or set a time limit for the restricted session to
end. This can be useful for students who are young, have attention, sensory, behaviour or other special needs.
Restrictions
To limit student access to specific apps, content (such as websites) and operating system actions.
Predictive text
For word processing assistance, the predictive text feature in iOS automatically makes word suggestions for users in English
and other languages.
Safari Reader
To help students focus when reading on the internet, use this feature to simplify the web page contents by removing distractions
such as sidebars, pop ups and navigation bars.