Supporting Literacy with Accessibility Tools

There are so many incredible built-in accessibility tools that our students have access to on iPad and Mac.  

Below is a workshop recording of some of my favourite features that I make a point of showing students at the beginning of the year, to set them up for success.

We started the workshop by making sure that Dictation and Speak Selection were turned on and customised within our Settings.

While in Settings we also customised our Control Centre to include some useful shortcuts for learners including the awesome Screen Recording tool.

We then went on to discover the power of built-in accessibility tools within Safari that can really help students as they research information. Some of the features we looked at were:

• Reader View 
• Look up 
• Speak Selection (having text spoken to you)
• Find tool (new to iOS16)
• Sharing options - including sending to Notes
• Taking a Screenshot, using Mark Up and saving as a pdf
• Taking a Screen Recording as you Mark Up - encouraging students to articulate their understanding of what they are reading in their research

This was just a very small taste of how the built-in accessibility features can really impact student learning - and our own personal use of iPad! 

 Here is the recording of our session:

You can also learn more about the accessibility tools we have available to us by visiting the following [Link: https://www.apple.com/accessibility/]

I HIGHLY recommend also checking out the fabulous resource posted to the forum by APLS Julia Parker - “30 Top tips for Accessibility in Education”. This is a series of quick tips for personalising iPad in both video and written form. Julia has created individual downloadable cards for each tip, with both the written pathway and the QR code to the video so you can interact in the way that best suits your learning style.

What are your favourite accessibility features that you use with your students?

Let’s start a conversation in the comments!