Andrew Simpson is a teacher and AT specialist who writes for Access: technology north’s blog. In his review of Clicker 8, he comments on the wide array of supportive features the software provides, especially for AT users and educators.
"For those who are unfamiliar with Clicker, it is a child-friendly word processor that’s jam-packed with assistive features to facilitate extended writing and help to develop literacy skills, available on Windows, Mac and iOS. It offers voice feedback, predictive text, symbol support and handy little voice-notes to assist with the writing process and then a whole myriad of ‘Clicker sets’ that can be tailored meet the individual learning needs of each user – more on those later.
In terms of accessibility (which is what I’m here for) it has both EyeGaze and Switch functionality built in and everything about it seems to have been designed with this in mind. We often come across software that is great for ‘standard access’ but that we have to find lots of work-arounds and hacks to make it work for alternative access methods.
From an end-user perspective, there’s an awful lot to be said for a seamless experience and feeling as though the software is for them as much as it is for everyone else (and they don’t need to run two extra bits of software and plug in 3 additional wires to make it work).
Anyone can use Clicker and even if they don’t necessarily need all of the bells and whistles it offers, I think it’s so important that they can.”
You can read the full review here.
