Family Friendly Tech and Advocacy: Tech Psychologist's Guide by Dr. Jeanne Beckman

Family Friendly Tech and Advocacy: Tech Psychologist's Guide   by Dr. Jeanne Beckman
Finally, a book to help families find the right technology to accommodate reading disorders (dyslexia) and other disabilties! ISBN 978-1-60264-089-4

How to purchase my book

To purchase through Virtual Bookworm (my publisher) you can click Virtual Bookworm Publisher: Tech Psychologist's Guide or http://tinyurl.com/3d2a6l
Amazon no longer allows Illinois professionals to get credit for referrals to Amazon due to a sales tax dispute. I will be referring to Powell's in the near future.

What is that TinyURL notation that you see in my blog? For those who use a screen reader, the link that is hidden behind words like Tech Psychologist Guide remains hidden. However, screen readers can read aloud the website address, or URL, if it was produced by TinyURL.com. Also, sometimes these addresses are so long that they wrap around several lines or overlap into colored areas of a website that obscure the actual address. Intrigued? You can create your own tinyurl's at http://tinyurl.com

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

GhostReader text to speech for Mac

For those who need the computer to read aloud to them, there has been the assumption that a PC, rather than Mac, was required. Here's a press release from AssistiveWare regarding GhostReader, which reads text and PDFs aloud on the Mac platform.

GhostReader 1.6 delivers new voices and Safari 4 compatibility

GhostReader box

Amsterdam - 16 April 2009 - ConvenienceWare™ / AssistiveWare® today announced the release of GhostReader™ 1.6, which delivers new voices for Arabic, Greek, Russian, Italian, Turkish, British English, and Norwegian. It also provides Safari 4 compatibility and adds new large educational discounts. GhostReader is a powerful, yet easy to use multilingual text-to-speech solution for Mac OS X that reads aloud PDF, Word and other documents as well as selected text in any application. It can also convert any text to audio files, MP3s, or bookmarkable audiobooks for playback on iPhone and iPod. Sit back and relax while GhostReader reads for you!

GhostReader 1.6 includes the following enhances:

  • New voice languages: Arabic, Greek, Russian.
  • New high quality voices for existing languages: Italian male voice, Turkish female voice, British female voice, Norwegian male voice.
  • Compatibility with Safari 4.
  • New localization: Italian (provided by our partner Active Software).

GhostReader can be used by anyone who prefers to listen to text rather than read it. Many professionals, writers, educators and students use it on a daily basis to save time, to proof read their own writing or to learn the pronunciation of foreign languages or to improve their reading and listening comprehension.

For more information, please go to http://www.assistiveware.com/pr.php#PR160409

Being able to learn by reading, regardless of whether by traditional books and eyes, by listening, or by other means, is a right to which everyone is entitled.