One of my favorite features of the iPad for people with reading impairments is the ability to read any selected text aloud. This one accessibility tool makes it possible for people with aphasia or dyslexia to listen to emails, websites, and e-books instead of reading them. As an added bonus, the feature can be set to highlight each word as it is ...

Every student of communication disorders learns the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) at some point in her education. I recently found two outstanding free apps that are unique amongst IPA apps for using North American English and games to encourage learning. Both focus only on vowels, but let's be honest - the consonants are the ...

As tablet technology's use in the classroom grows, the student with Dyslexia or learning disabilities could be at disadvantage without a suitable app to meet their needs. Enter iReadWrite by TextHelp TextHelp are also the publishers the powerful Read & Write Gold software. The Read and Write Gold software retails for $295 on MAC and PC and ...

Word searches are a versatile activity for patients of various levels and abilities. I use them almost daily for expressive and receptive language skills, attention, errors awareness, reasoning, following directions, and visual scanning/ tracking. Many residents recognize and understand how to complete word searches with little direction needed; ...

While some patients in skilled nursing facilities are there for short-term stays in order to receive various therapy and nursing services, others will remain with us for months, years, or possibly for the rest of their lives. We expect to see some patients again due to the progressive nature of some disorders. Others might return unexpectedly to ...

Hot on the heels of Speech Pacesetter, Aptus Speech & Language Therapy has released another great app to help people slow their rate of speech. This app takes the traditional pacing board and modernizes it, adding helpful visuals, settings, and topics to help those with Parkinson's disease, fast rate of speech, dysarthria, apraxia of speech, ...

Agrammatism is a hallmark of non-fluent aphasia, resulting in telegraphic speech consisting mostly of nouns with a few verbs and adjectives strung together to create a sentence. It's the connector words in our language that make up most of the words used in fluent speech, and these are the words that often go missing when a person suffers a brain ...

Today I'd like to share a fun and inexpensive speech and language activity that would definitely be a classroom hit but could also be reproduced at home as well! ''Springtime Mystery Box'' This is an idea that one of the teachers I work with and I concocted to help the children in our preschool classrooms to IMAGINE, DESCRIBE, GUESS and of ...

Over the next few months I am going to begin researching and exploring a variety of disorders and disabilities we commonly see within the Early Intervention population. Almost like a refresher course for those therapists who graduated before the year 2000, myself included! Today's focus will be on Cerebral Palsy, what it is and the facts ...

Lately I have been really into using free apps in combination with paid speech apps. I have been using language apps that target syntax or morphology taking screen shots and incorporating those screen shots into other apps. Here is an example: First I start off with an app like Tense Builder by Mobile Education Store and take a screen shot after ...