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Sometimes there is nothing obviously ‘wrong’ with a pupil, in terms of any recognised physical, sensory or mental disability, yet it becomes obvious that something is going seriously wrong with their writing.
Supportive writing technology may help:
- Writers with physical disabilities - Some pupils with progressive conditions such as muscular dystrophy have good fine motor control but may be very weak – they may be able to write only very slowly, and may produce only a small amount of text before getting tired. With the correct supportive technology they will be able to write more with less effort.
- Pupils with poor motor control - Some pupils can write, but they are uncoordinated, their writing is slow, their motor control is poor, and their writing is uneven and hard to read. Previously such pupils might have been regarded as ‘lazy’ or ‘untidy’ and might have been punished instead of supported. Pupils of this type are sometimes referred to as having a specific dysgraphia. Delayed maturation of the left hemisphere of the brain or acquired brain damage are amongst the suspected causes. Some pupils with writing difficulties may have a form of dyspraxia which affects more than just handwriting.
They may have problems with organising a whole range of physical and constructional tasks. For example, they may be noticeably clumsy or uncoordinated in activities like kicking a ball, dressing, buttoning and unbuttoning clothes, putting together puzzles or models etc. Writers with these type of difficulties will benefit enormously from the introduction of a keyboard based writing system, which relieves them from the demoralising physical and mental struggle to produce written work and allows them to think about content of their writing.
- Writers with specific learning / literacy difficulties - Many pupils (with or without physical writing difficulties) show difficulties with some or all aspects of spelling and sentence construction, and putting together written language. This can further slow down the flow of their written work, cause the language to be disjointed and the thoughts expressed to be incomplete. Their written work will be short, possibly difficult to read and may have poor structure and grammar.
Use of technology will very likely be one part (although not the whole answer) of an educational strategy to address this special need. Writers with specific learning difficulties may benefit from use of word processors and software which support them in areas where they have difficulty. Phonetic spellcheckers, word banks, speech output, word prediction and speech recognition software are all possibilities.
- Organisational difficulties - Some pupils have difficulty managing time, remembering things, and/or, in general, coping with the organisational aspects of school work. They may not find it easy to think of what they want to say and may have difficulty planning out how to put it into sentences and ordered paragraphs.
Word processors and other supportive software allows them to draft outlines of work, fill in the text under set headings, delete errors and move text around without anyone seeing their early attempts, and to avoid frequent recopying is very motivating.
- Specific language disorder - Pupils with speech and language disorders – particularly disorders of language comprehension as well as expressive language production – very commonly also have difficulties with reading and spelling later. These pupils too may benefit from use of a writing support aid. Their need is sometimes even greater than that of writers with spelling difficulties because language disordered pupils cannot always compensate for writing difficulties through their oral work – their oral work is not necessarily good either. (In fact, in some cases, their written work is often better than their oral work, as the added structure and the extra time available for ‘composition’ of sentences can be helpful to them.) Teachers may find it particularly difficult to spot that the general cognitive abilities of these pupils is good, when their language work is poor in all respects.
- Writers with visual impairment - Visually impaired pupils may require specialised adaptations or software to use computers. Changing the word processor text font to a larger size, adjusting the foreground and/or background colours, and using a talking word processor may help. However, writers with severe visually impairments may need products specifically designed for visually impaired users, such as specialised screen readers and screen magnification programs.
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