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Assistive Touch
I have little strength in my hands, so operating a phone or tablet can be challenging. I wanted to let you guys know about something that has helped me greatly—assistive touch. It’s a feature on Apple products (Android may have something similar) that allows you to control the device without having to press the hard buttons. I find it particularly useful for screenshots, but also for adjusting volume, and locking the screen. Do you guys have any similar tips?
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12 Replies
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That’s great Ryan! Thanks for the heads up. I’m an avid Apple-user, so I’ll definitely look into this.
I also know there are apps that allow you to connect a phone to a laptop and type that way. Does anyone use something like that?
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I haven’t done that, but I recently acquired a dragon dictation software for my computer. Helpful piece of equipment indeed!
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Awesome! I’ll look into it.
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- I just thought of another similar tip. Enable the predictive keyboard on your iPhone. It allows me to type way faster. It also learns commonly used words or even phrases. For example, I talk about sports a lot, so the word “player” will usually appear after I hit the letter P. Another thing… I talked about dragon earlier. It’s a more complex dictation software, but the dictation system built into the iPhone is actually quite accurate and useful itself.
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Very cool. Also, I’m about to do a separate forum post about this, but you’ll definitely be interested in this technology: http://m.ign.com/articles/2018/05/17/xbox-adaptive-controller-for-players-with-disabilities-officially-revealed
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I gotta hear about this! Where’s the post?
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I will post a separate discussion about it, but yeah go ahead and read that article. It’s pretty cool.
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I love the predictive keyboard! My mom hates it, so I had to turn off the feature on her phone otherwise I’d have no clue what she’s trying to say.
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Yeah it’s a great tool. And that’s funny. My Dad would have trouble using that too.
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Haha I don’t see any downside to it.
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I have been using the Dragon Speak dictation software for many years now, and it has helped me. It definitely has a few quirks that are at times quite aggravating, but as you learn how to use it, you’ll quickly learn that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I’m using this software to reply to all of the posts in this forum, and while I may have to go back and edit some of the text to make sure that the punctuation is correct, it actually does a very good job. If anybody is interested in the software, I would strongly encourage you to purchase it, because I think you will find that this will help you, especially when it comes to corresponding with others via text. This dictation software sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between certain words. (Example – there & their, to, two & too) While this is not a huge problem, it does force the user to go back and edit their document to make sure that everything is spelled correctly and to make sure that all the punctuation is in the correct position. Like I said, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
I do have one suggestion if you decide to purchase the Dragon Speak software. They make a home and a professional version. I would definitely recommend that you spend the extra money and purchase the professional version because the speech recognition on this particular version is much better than the home version. Trust me, I have used both. This software can be purchased at any electronics retailer such as Best Buy or Fry’s Electronics. You can even purchase the software at some of your local office supply stores such as OfficeMax, Office Depot or Staples.
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Absolutely Michael! I was able to acquire mine for free through a local program called Abilitree. It’s basically a program that serves people with disabilities by job training or providing necessary equipment. It’s local, but I’d encourage anyone interested in Dragon to see if a similar organization exists in their area so you can get it for free!
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