I recently attended the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference. Below are some different links to information and resources I picked up through sessions I attended.

Cool4ed.com is a resource through California State University for OER textbooks. Check out the “Course Showcase” and see what textbooks they use for courses in Arts, Business, Education, Humanities, Math and Statistics, Science and Technology, and Social Science.

Central Access Reader (CAR) is a free text-to-speech application designed specifically for students with print-related disabilities. CAR reads Word docs and pasted text using the voice installed on the computer. It also has many customizable features. NOTE: Windows 64-bit only and Mac Yosemite.

Grackle Docs Demo Video. Grackle Docs is a free tool you can use to help you make Google docs accessible. Open a Google doc and then go to Add-ons, Get Add-ons, type in “Grackle Docs” in the search and add it. In order to use the PDF saving features you would have to purchase the for fee version. The free tool is great to use as you create your Google Docs as it will walk you through making it accessible and help you learn what to look for in your document. One of the best features of this tool is that is allows you to make your tables accessible by either selecting that the table is being used purely for layout purposes, or lets you mark the first row as a header.

Study on Student Uses and Perceptions of Closed Captions and Transcripts. Results from a study conducted by Oregon State University’s Ecampus Research Unit. You can download the full report if interested or scroll through a summary of findings, such as 75% of students use captions as a learning aid, and the most common reasons for using captions is to help students focus and retain information.