On this episode, the AT Help Desk team are joined by accessibility expert Dawn Campbell, who works as a business development manager for Accessibil-IT. We’re going to get into web and digital document accessibility, exploring what document accessibility is, its history, why document accessibility is important, and where you can get help.

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Writing Apps have evolved a lot over the past decade. Where previous apps tended to focus on one area of difficulty, most modern writing apps now offer a suite of functions designed to bolster your writing from start to finish. DocsPlus very much fits into the latter category, offering writing support from first draft to polished final product. Let’s take a closer look at these tools and how they could be useful for struggling writers.

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For over a decade, smartphone cameras have been used to help blind and low-vision individuals connect with the world around them. We’ve looked at some of these apps before, including “Be My Eyes” and “Seeing AI”, and while those apps are still very much worth using, today we are going to take a quick look at a new entry in this space.

TapTapSee is an app for iOS and Android that is designed to help blind and low-vision individuals identify the world around them without the use of a third-party. This is an important distinction because unlike some of the visual assistant apps that already exist in this category such as the aforementioned app “Be My Eyes”, TapTapSee is designed to be used independently.

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iOS 18 has recently been released, and with that release comes even more built-in accessibility features. Today we are going to look at those new tools, along with some new updates that were released to improve upon pre-existing tools. Let’s take a look!

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Today we review some apps for students including Anki Flashcards and MyStudyLife. Then we review some exciting new AT hardware including the Palma 2 e-reader, and more.

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Today we are going to look at one of the higher rated flashcard apps on the app store. We’ve looked at a few of these apps in the past, and today we’re going to look at a flashcard app that does things a bit differently.

Anki is a highly customizable flashcard app that supports images, videos, markup languages such as LaTeX and more. The browser version of the app is free, and through this version of the app, users can have the most freedom in how they create and review their deck.

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When you’re a student studying multiple subjects, staying on top of your school, homework, social life, and work is not an easy task. Of course, you’ve likely been given an agenda at the start of the school year, and while an agenda serves as a decent paper-based organizational tool, you’re probably going to be better off seeking out a digital alternative instead. This is especially true for students with learning differences who tend to perform better within a more flexible digital space.

MyStudyLife is a personal academic assistant that is designed to keep track of your commitments through scheduling, tasks, and reminders. Essentially it does everything that an agenda does, in a digital space, so that you can access your schedule from anywhere on virtually any device. The app was specifically developed for students, so it’s based around an academic calendar where users can input term dates, holidays, classes, exams, extra-curricular activities and more.

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Huge congratulations to Hearing Solutions Audiologist, Danielle Lafleur, on being awarded the 2024 Student Poster Outstanding Research Award (1^st Prize). The project investigates the primary care providers’ behaviour attitudes, and knowledge regarding the hearing health of their older patients. This project was co led by University of British Columbia School of Audiology and Speech Sciences and Wavefront Centre for Communication Accessibility, and was co funded by Vancouver Foundation and Michael Smith Health Research BC. Danielle accepted the award at the Canadian Academy of Audiology conference this past week.

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Notetaking apps are one of our favorite ways of staying organized, whether it’s in the classroom, at home, or in the office. And while these apps were brought into this world as fairly simple word processing programs, the very concept (and execution) of notetaking has evolved greatly thanks to the growth and evolution of the internet.

And while there are already so many great options for notetaking apps already available, the app that we are looking at today is unique enough that it definitely deserves some attention.

Obsidian is an open-source notetaking app of virtual infinite possibilities. And while that statement might sound hyperbolic, it’s also true. Because the app is open source, individuals can create their own plugins to enhance the apps default functionality. As of right now, there are 1,924 plugins available to download, for free.

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Today is a short, news and app round-up episode. We look at some recent assistive technology news, new apps for learning math, a low-cost text-to-speech alternative, and a whole lot of scholarship opportunities across New Brunswick and Canada.

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