Netbooks and e-Readers
By Kreiger, Kent; Quest, Vol. 17, No. 2Publication Date: April-June 2010
Product review evaluates electronic book readers and netbook computers as educational tools for a college student with severe muscular atrophy. The reviewer, who has type 3 spinal muscular atrophy, found the e-Readers he tried, the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, and Apple iPad, to be inaccessible as they are operated via buttons and do not offer the use of voice commands to turn pages. A mini notebook computer, or netbook, was found to be a viable option, as the internal hard drive size of 160 gigabytes and limited amount of random access memory (RAM) were sufficient for accommodating the software and add-ons he requires, including the speech-to-text program Dragon NaturallySpeaking and a Kensington Turbo Mouse Trackball. An advantage to the netbook noted is built-in wireless Internet capabilities. Onscreen keyboards such as the one built into Windows operating systems, a necessity for users with limited finger strength and agility, can be used with the netbook, as can the programmable freeware Click-N-Type, a program which allows adding words to its built-in dictionary. For Mac notebooks, the voice-activation application MacSpeech Dictate and onscreen keyboard Keystrokes can be used.
Assistive Products Discussed: KEYSTROKES 3
DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING
CLICK-N-TYPE VIRTUAL KEYBOARD
SLIMBLADE TRACKBALL (MODEL K72327US)
ORBIT OPTICAL TRACKBALL (MODEL K64327)
ORBIT TRACKBALL WITH SCROLL RING (MODEL K72337US)
Published by: Muscular Dystrophy Association (Website:http://www.mdausa.org)
Link to text: http://quest.mda.org/article/netbooks-and-e-readers
