Chrome Extensions for Students with Special Needs

There are countless Google Chrome extensions that can help both teachers and students. I’ve written about some of them, and you can read about those here. For this post, I wanted to share four Google Chrome extensions that can be very useful for students with special needs.


OpenDyslexic Font

From its extension overview:  “Open-Dyslexic is an open sourced font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. This extension overrides all fonts on web pages with the OpenDyslexic font, and formats pages to be more easily readable.

Your brain can sometimes do funny things to letters. OpenDyslexic tries to help prevent some of these things from happening. Letters have heavy weighted bottoms to add a kind of "gravity" to each letter. You are able to quickly figure out which part of the letter is down because of this feature. It aids in recognizing the correct letter and sometimes helps to keep your brain from rotating them around. Consistently weighted bottoms can also help reinforce the line of text. The unique shapes of each letter can help prevent confusion by flipping and swapping.

Open-Dyslexic has recently received favourable coverage from the BBC (http://bbc.com/news/technology-19734341) and is included in many iOS and Android apps. Unlike much other dyslexia or DRD typefaces, OpenDyslexic is completely free for individuals, companies, schools, and in short: everyone.”



Speech Recognition Anywhere

From its extension overview:  “With ‘Speech Recognition Anywhere’ you can control the Internet with your voice. Use voice recognition to fill out forms and documents on the web! Dictate emails with speech to text! Use Voice Recognition to fill out any form and dictate email with speech to text. Control the Internet with custom voice commands!

No need to copy and paste your speech into a form input field. The speech you speak is automatically typed into any form on any web page handsfree. You can also browse the web and completely control a website with voice commands. It can be used like a virtual assistant. Speech Recognition Anywhere now includes text to speech, custom voice commands and scripting. See seabreezecomputers.com/speech for more information.”



Colorblind – Dalton

From its extension overview:  “Dalton is software allowing people with different kinds of color blindness (colour vision deficiency) to see more colors. Dalton provides solutions to some of the everyday problems experienced by colour blind people. People with various types of colour deficiency could benefit from the use of Dalton software including those affected by Tritanopia (blue colour vision deficiency), Deuteranopia (green), Protanopia (red).

People generally have the assumption that if you suffer from blue-yellow color blindness these are the only colors you have trouble seeing. But that’s wrong. Color blindness doesn’t relate to just two color shades you can’t distinguish, it is the whole color spectrum which is affected. The extension is totally free. The main aim is to help people to see the world colorful.



BeeLine Reader

From its extension overview:  “BeeLine's color gradient makes reading faster/easier for over 90% of people. How much will it help you?

Have a lot to read? Make reading easier and faster using BeeLine Reader! BeeLine uses a color gradient to guide your eyes from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This seemingly simple tweak makes reading substantially easier and faster because it allows you to transition between lines quickly and effortlessly. Thousands of people have taken our online diagnostic test, and over 90% of them saw a benefit from BeeLine. Many people are able to read 20% or 30% faster with BeeLine, even on their first try.

Research by educators has shown dramatic reading fluency and comprehension gains for students, and research with adults is ongoing at Stanford Medical School. BeeLine has been adopted by the California Public Library System, Bookshare.org, and Reading Is Fundamental. The BeeLine extension works on millions of news websites and blogs, and you can even use read Kindle books, Google Docs, and Gmail with it. You can also get our PDF extension, which works on any text-based PDF.

You can read as much as you want with BeeLine for two weeks days. After that, you can use BeeLine up to 5 times every day for free, or subscribe to BeeLine Reader Pro for just $2/month (or less if you subscribe annually). Students and teachers can also apply on our website for our free Student Pass (certain limitations apply).”