The main benefit that Gareth got out of that particular software was helping with his structure and his grammar.
But you'd already done the planning…
I'd already done the planning before so it saved me time…
So the mind mapping helped him structure ideas and which point would logically follow on from this, but the text help - Read and Write - helped him with actually structuring his sentences, structuring within the actual paragraphs. So when you hear the voice reading out loud…
Electronic navigation is important as it allows…
…and it doesn't slow down at the end of a sentence, you think “Ooh! She needs to take a breath”
…to help them access the information Using styles can save you time once you know how.
…and you realise you've missed a full stop, a comma.
…Use assistive technology to help them access the information. Using styles can save you time once you know how.
Similarly if you put the wrong word in, it can instantly hear it. There are other features but that was the main thing for that particular student that seemed to help him.
It's quite a large dissertation that you have to write isn't it?
10,000
10 000 words yeah…
What changing the colour does is, it changes the contrast between the black text and the white background. Particularly on the computer screen it can be very, very glaring, and quite distracting. So it tones down the contrast between the two. I mean we have coloured overlays that do the same thing flat on paper, and of course, although we can go through what's called an intuitive overlay test with students, which is very simple it gives them the chance to try out different overlays, the properties of the paper and the overlay are slightly different to the screen but it usually gives a good starting point. If someone has a yellow overlay it makes sense to try a yellow colour on the screen. And they might have a perhaps slightly more mustardy yellow colour on the screen, because of how bright the screen is as opposed to the overlay, but it helps pick out the text.