Web 2.0 Untangled: Artie Vossel-Newman on MyStudyBar

After a lovely lunch, we were visited by Artie Vossel-Newman (http://twitter.com/ArtieVN) talking about MyStudyBar http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/eduapps/mystudybar.php, a free download that computer users with disabilities or dyslexia can use to help them.

It has ways of making computer screens tinted yellow, or making a box appear so you can read text one line at a time. It also features voice-to-text and text-to-voice software- ideal for impersonating Stephen Hawking. You can also save the text-to-voice as an mp3, which is a nice feature enabling dyslexics to make their own audio book-equivalents. There was also a program for creating mind maps. It’s all totally free and supported by video tutorials online.

It looks great for readers with disabilities and reading difficulties, and would help those readers be more confident with computers and thus be able to engage with Web 2.0 applications. So it’s great, especially as it’s all free!

(“Web 2.0 Untangled” was a day-long conference organised by CILIP’s UC&R BBO and CoFHE MidWest Circle, held at Wolfson College on the 24th November 2010. It featured 7 speakers on a variety of topics. I attended thanks to Oxford staff development funding. A condition of this funding is to write-up your experience of the session to pass around your colleagues in Oxford- which is what I'm doing here!)