Section 1.3: Assistive Technology, Part 3

Common assistive technologies for individuals with hearing impairments

• Closed Captions (CC) - display "spoken dialogue as printed words on the television [or computer] screen." The captions also identify sound effects, who is speaking, and laughter. Users can choose whether or not to view closed captions. Open captions present the same information but are displayed to all users. [ 38 ]

Common assistive technologies for individuals with learning disabilities

There are a number of tools that users have available to help with written communication such as:

• Phonetic spellcheckers
• Talking dictionaries
• Word completion software

Other tools provide assistance with organizing information or processing information in multiple modalities:

• Visual outliners: outline tools "that allow the user to organise notes, agendas, to-do lists into a [hierarchical] format." [ 22 ]
• OCR
• Digital Talking Books