Blog 4: Helperbird is Here to Help with Readability

 

Graphic features cartoon-like rendering of individuals with disabilities. Each individual appears in a colored rectangle: An individual in a wheelchair is in the lime green rectangle; an individual wearing a hijab and using sign language is in the orange rectangle; an individual in a wheelchair with a basketball is in the blue rectangle; and an individual with no arms or legs is on skateboard in the red rectangle. At the top are blue words that say Access for all. Created in Canva.

Did you know the month of July is Disability Pride Month? Today's blog post is about increasing accessibility for learners with disabilities. There are several adaptive technology tools available to students.

Although there are an array of assistive tools to help students with various disabilities, I will focus on accessibility in the context of readability. Some of these students have dyslexia and other diagnosed visual impairments and others have cases that have yet to be diagnosed. I have been in the business of providing accommodations for students even when they don't have a 504 or IEP. If there is a way I can help remove a barrier for a student to learn, then I will do that. I will continue with this tradition as a school librarian. 

The tool I have chosen is Helperbird: Accessibility and Productivity App. This is a Google Chrome Extension that will be freely available to students in my school district since it is a Google For Education District and our students have Chromebooks.  However, it is available as an app as well.

Students will need to go to the Chrome Web Store to find the extension. Learners at Google Districts will be able to login using their Google Account. Once it is downloaded as an extension, it will appear in the toolbar. Once learners click on it, there are a handful of resources available to students. One of the most useful is a PDF Reader. With this feature, students can upload a PDF and the app will read it out loud to them. 

If there is an online resource or text students need to read, they will navigate to that site and then open the Helperbird extension. From there they have a few options, and one is View in Reading Mode. This allows the text of the webpage to be read aloud. Users will need to select the text they want read and then press the play button. 

The Immersive Reading feature allows users to adjust texts in the following ways: custom font, text size, word spacing, letter spacing, line height, and text align. Students will be able to navigate to a website and adjust the text to fit their readability needs. Users can also change the style and color of text, links, and background. For example, if a student needs to a black background with white letters, they can make that change by opening the Helperbird extension and choosing background color . Other features include a magnifier for students to make text bigger so it is easier to see. 

All of the above features are free to use once the extension or app is downloaded. However, they do have some features that are only available when the Pro packages is purchased. Many of the above features are available as separate Google Chrome Extensions, so it is helpful for Helperbird to have many of those features in one place.

One barrier to accessing the tool is that some of the tools do cost money, or the free tools have additional features that cost money. One way I can assist students in my school is to set some money aside in the budget to pay for some of these features/websites for students. I could let the teachers in the school know that I am able to purchase these tools for set number of students.

Additional Resources:

Google Tools for Accommodation

Free Text Help 

Immersive Reader

SC Talking Book Services

Disability Pride Day


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