James Nuttall Blog

My plug has moved

Go to

Jamesnuttallph.com

I would like to introduce you to my new book, Successfully Control Your iPad With Your Voice. I personally use voice control with my iPad and my iPhone most of the time. This is because 15 years ago I was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). I can no longer walk and only have about 10% of the use of my arms and hands. So I am very grateful that Apple has the Accessibility feature Voice Control.

Voice Control allows me to operate my iPhone or iPad 99% of the time with my voice. Voice commands replace most of the tap and swipe gestures that most people use to control their devices. Additionally, I dictate my email, text messages, and documents like this blog using Voice Control. 

To open Voice Control for the first time you can give the command, Hey Siri Open Voice Control. Several files will be downloaded to your device so that Voice Control can operate. The download only happens once.

Perhaps, one of the best commands to remember for Voice Control is, Show Commands. This will bring up a list of the voice commands to be used with Voice Control. Two important commands that quickly turn Voice Control on and off are, Go To Sleep  and, Wake Up.

Let me focus on dictation for a moment. Fortunately, Apple has introduced a new dictation module with iOS and iPadOS 17. This new dictation module is built on artificial intelligence (AI). This module’s accuracy is greatly improved over past dictation models. I dictate my books and my blog posts using Voice Control dictation. Beside great dictation, Voice Control has many voice commands that help you control dictation.

One of the easiest ways to dictate on my iPad or iPhone is to go to settings and tap General and then turn on Enable Dictation. This will place a microphone key just left of the spacebar on your on-screen keyboard. When you tap on this microphone key, Siri dictation is turned on. Simply speak what you would like to type and your words will appear on the screen. To turn off dictation simply tap the microphone key again and dictation will be stopped. Also you will want to turn off Voice Control before dictating with Siri dictation, otherwise there will be interference between the two dictation modules

The style of my book is written like one friend explaining and showing Voice Control to you and not so much like a technical computer manual. I certainly walk you through the many aspects and uses of Voice Control. But in a style that is easily comprehended. 

It takes a while to master Voice Control since dictation and voice commands require a bit of learning and practice. But I believe in the end it is well worth your time and effort.

Bookshare!

Those who are good readers often go to their local public library and check out a big stack of books to read. But if you are blind, print disabled or have a physical limitation that prevents you from reading a standard print book, there were no libraries for you! Until NOW! 

Bookshare is an online library for the print challenged. The Bookshare library has over one million e-books!  If you have a characteristic that prevents you from reading standard print you can download these e-books. Once downloaded your computer, smartphone or tablet can read these books to you.

Like the National Library Service an applicant must fill out a form indicating the presence of a print disability. If you have already been approvec by the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, you automatically qualify for Bookshare.

The Bookshare application can be signed by the following School personnel,

Assistive Technology Professional,

• Dyslexia Specialist,

• Learning Disability Specialist,

• Librarian,

• Physical or Occupational Therapist,

• Reading Specialist,

• Resource Specialist,

• Special Education Teacher,

• School Psychologist,

• Speech Language Pathologist,

• Teacher of the Visually Impaired,

• Other Professionals with appropriate experience. I8

Here are Qualifying Professionals Outside of School.

• Clinical Psychologist,

• Doctor of Medicine,

• Doctor of Osteopathy,

• Neurologist,

• Ophthalmologist,

• Optometrist,

• Psychiatrist, 

•  Registered nurse.

As can be seen a wide number of individuals are able to verify that you have a print disability. For example, the simplest could be your classroom teacher or your family doctor!

 

In the United States Bookshare is free for all K-12 or college students with a print disability! For other print disabled persons there is a fee of 79 dollars and 99 cents per year.

Once qualified you can download as many e-books as you need. Unlike your public library you do not have to return books to the Bookshare library. So there are never any overdue books! 

You can read books online or with the free Bookshare app for Apple and Android devices. You can even read Bookshare books using the Amazon Echo with the Bookshare Reader skill.

So, Happy Reading!

20 Books To The Equivalent of A Masters Degree. 

I have a challenge for the readers of my blog. My Challenge is to read an interesting and informative book for just 15 minutes a day. This could easily be the 15 minutes before you fall asleep at night. You might not realize it but if you read 15 minutes a day using any of the techniques and applications outlined in this blog, you will be able to read 10 books a year! 

What can be accomplished by reading 10 books a year. If you read in a concentrated field such as psychology, history, political science, business or English literature you will have read the equivalent of a masters degree. I call this my “20 books to a masters degree.”

A masters degree usually requires 30 credit hours with each course being worth three credits. This adds up to 10 courses. For each course you read a main book and another book as supplementary research. This adds up to 20 books to complete the equivalent of a masters degree from a college or university.

It is important to choose something that interests you. If it interests you, you will be motivated to read each day. For example, my friend who loves history read a book on the American Civil War and a biography of Abraham Lincoln. He went on to read other books on American History and biographies of important people in U.S. History. In two years he completed the equivalent of a masters degree in U.S. History. Again these books interested him and he was motivated to read them.

My 20 books were in the field of reading theory, reading instruction and dyslexia. All of my books were checked out from Bookshare.org an internet library for dyslexic and print impaired readers. I will discuss Bookshare.org in my next post. In this way I read my 10 books a year for the yearly library fee of $79. Imagine my feeling of accomplishment, the knowledge of a masters degree for just $158 and 15 minutes a day.

So set your goal to read 15 minutes a day in a book that interests and motivates you.
If you would like to listen to this post and my other blog posts go to my website:

jamesnuttallphd.com

When my sister worked at the Home Depot often a person would approach her with something to purchase and would say, "I left my glasses at home can you read this for me?" The reality was the person could not read. My sister would read the instructions on the item to the person. What the customer did not understand was that the smartphone in their pocket could take a picture of the instructions and read the instructions to them. 

Here are several apps that convert text in an image to spoken text. For iPhone the app is Voice Dream Scanner ($9.99) which can be downloaded from the App Store.. Open the app and point your camera at the text. After hitting the red shutter button, you just tap the read/play button and the text is displayed and read to you. Similarly for an Android phone download the Text Fairy OCR app from the Google Play Store (free). Open the app and point your camera at the text. You then push the shutter button. After selecting the OCR button, you then tap the Speaker Button to hear the text read aloud. I focus on these two apps since they are essentially going to shoot and read. For instantaneous reading there is the Envision AI app available both for iPhone and android. Simply open the app and point the camera at the text and it will be read aloud instantly. A similar free app for the iPhone is Microsoft’s Seeing AI app. Again open the app and point at the text which will be instantaneously read aloud.

You might be asking yourself, “Do I really need to read?” Thomas Corley helps to provide an answer. In his book Rich Habits he notes that 88% of self-made millionaires read for one half hour every day. This means they read between four or five books a month to learn something new to improve their lives. With assistive technology you too can join this group of successful readers. Therefore, reading can be within your reach and available as an everyday experience.

Technology brings you independence (when, where, what to read), joy of being a reader, education, entertainment, employment, integration into the larger community.

When my sister worked at the Home Depot often a person would approach her with something to purchase and would say, "I left my glasses at home can you read this for me?" The reality was the person could not read. My sister would read the instructions on the item to the person. What the customer did not understand was that the smartphone in their pocket could take a picture of the instructions and read the instructions to them. 

Here are several apps that convert text in an image to spoken text. For iPhone the app is Voice Dream Scanner ($9.99) which can be downloaded from the App Store.. Open the app and point your camera at the text. After hitting the red shutter button, you just tap the read/play button and the text is displayed and read to you. Similarly for an Android phone download the Text Fairy OCR app from the Google Play Store (free). Open the app and point your camera at the text. You then push the shutter button. After selecting the OCR button, you then tap the Speaker Button to hear the text read aloud. I focus on these two apps since they are essentially going to shoot and read. For instantaneous reading there is the Envision AI app available both for iPhone and android. Simply open the app and point the camera at the text and it will be read aloud instantly. A similar free app for the iPhone is Microsoft’s Seeing AI app. Again open the app and point at the text which will be instantaneously read aloud.

You might be asking yourself, “Do I really need to read?” Thomas Corley helps to provide an answer. In his book Rich Habits he notes that 88% of self-made millionaires read for one half hour every day. This means they read between four or five books a month to learn something new to improve their lives. With assistive technology you too can join this group of successful readers. Therefore, reading can be within your reach and available as an everyday experience.

Technology brings you independence (when, where, what to read), joy of being a reader, education, entertainment, employment, integration into the larger community.

 Hello Readers:

After sometime I have decided to start blogging again! The reason is to reach readers and introduce them to my books. Just this week I published my new book Successfully Control Yout iPad With Your Voice. You see 15 years ago I was diagnosed  with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Since that time I have moved from walking to powerchair to being bedridden. I now have about 10% use of my arms and hands. In order  to write now I dictate on my iPad. This is how I have come to write a book on voice control. My book is available at the Apple bookstore for $4.99. Just open the Books app on your iPad and purchase the book. My book is also available through the Barnes & Noble app and can be read in that app.

I will be frequently posting on reading, dyslexia and assistive technology. So please visit  my blog frequently. Please follow my writings and leave me your comments.

 This is a short review of the Android app @Voice Aloud Reader (VAR). VAR is a great tool for reading webpages and news articles aloud. When looking at a webpage or a news article on Zite, you can transfer the text to VAR to be read aloud. But let's look at how to set up VAR.
After installing VAR you will be presented a series of controls at the bottom of a page of text. There is an arrow button to start and stop reading. A left and right arrow to advance or backup the text being read. Then there is a little up arrow. This up arrow brings some significant controls. There are three sliders to adjust the the rate of the read aloud, the pitch and the volume of the voice. The best part of these sliders is that you can set the reading speed exactly to your preferences.

When you are at a webpage or in an app and you wish to read something, you look for the share page icon. On most Android devices and on the Kindle Fire this icon looks like three dots forming an arrowhead. Tap the arrowhead and you will be presented with the choice of sharing the page with VAR. Once selected the main article will be extracted into VAR. Once there the article will be read aloud. Sentences are highlighted as they are read. For easy reading VAR has both a day and night mode. I prefer to read with night time mode (see the picture). This is so slick and quick that choosing to read things aloud is very natural and a breeze.


If the print is too small for you simply make a small swipe down with your finger. This will bring up a line with a plus or minus magnifying lens. Tap on the plus or minus sign to adjust font size. You can also start reading at any particular point by double tapping with one finger. Additionally if you open VAR settings, you can choose to follow what has been copied to the clipboard. In this manner you can read any text that can be highlighted and copied. This is helpful for reading email aloud. To sun up VAR is simple and easy to use. It makes reading items aloud a quick and seamless process. Best of all @Voice Aloud Reader is free in either the Google Play Store or the Amazon App Store. @Voice Aloud Reader works with both Android tablets and the Kindle Fire.