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NWT Literacy Council | A Guide to Assistive Technology |
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| SARAW - Speech Assisted Reading And Writing SARAW (Speech Assisted Reading And Writing) is a talking computer program designed to teach basic reading and writing skills to adults who currently read and write in the range of grades 2-6. SARAW was designed primarily to meet the needs of adults with severe physical disabilities who are nonverbal. The Reading portion of the software can read stories aloud: a word at a time, a sentence at a time, or all at once. Learners may choose from a collection of stories written by other adult literacy learners and other adults with physical disabilities, or read their own work. A teacher/tutor can also add stories (using the Setup program) that interest particular learners. The Activities section contains two different word games and a Sounding Board to teach phonics. The Sounding Board uses multi-coloured images to help the learner associate pictures with the sounds that letters make. The word games each have varying levels of difficulty. The Writing section could be described as a talking word processor. The computer speaks as the learner types, providing immediate feedback about the word just typed. A Word Prediction feature helps learners spell words and/or increase their typing speed. As the learners start to type a word, the computer shows the learners common words that start with the letter the learner has typed. Pressing another key tells the computer to finish typing the selected word automatically. SARAW also comes with the following:
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SARAW
offers learners a set of activities to choose from, rather than a set
of lessons that must be completed in a particular order. The learners
make their own choices about what interests them, and what skills they
want to develop further. SARAW has three major components: Reading,
Activities, and Writing. |
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