Don Johnston Inc. and Texthelp Join Forces
By Ben Johnston, Director of Marketing; Don Johnston Incorporated, Learning is for Life™; donjohnston.com
Earlier this morning, Don Johnston, Inc., made a huge announcement—that the AT tools division of Don Johnston Inc. is joining forces with Texthelp (while our curriculum division, including Readtopia and First Author, will form a new company called Building Wings).
We’re excited to come together with Texthelp and work as one for a common goal—supporting equality and inclusion of all people, especially individuals with dyslexia and many other learning needs. Over the last few months, the Don Johnston and Texthelp teams have had the privilege of getting to know each other, and in the process, realized how closely aligned our missions and sense of purpose are. Even our founders both have very personal stories that continue to drive the passion behind the companies! Through our conversations, we realized how much more we can accomplish together. And by channeling our energies together, we can do more for students, and reach for a huge goal to help the large majority of students who could immensely benefit from AT tools, but don’t have access.
I can say personally that I’ve been deeply impressed by every member of the Texthelp team that I’ve worked with. There’s an incredible depth of passion, talent, and commitment to huge goals that will bring assistive tools to 1 Billion people around the globe. It’ll be a privilege working together to accomplish this, and Don is joining the Texthelp board to help bring in his own experience to this goal.
One question that people have right away is, what will happen to Don Johnston products like Snap&Read, uPAR, and Co:Writer? That’s a great question as millions of students rely on these products every day! We’re committed to keeping continuity and maintaining choice, because through choice we can provide the best possible learning experience for students. So all of these tools will continue, AND there will also be some real benefits to bringing our teams together. We already have plans to bring benefits to the products right away:
- Snap&Read will be able to read math in EquatIO out loud
- Co:Writer will work in OrbitNote
- uPAR will recognize if Read&Write or Snap&Read is installed and will link to appropriate resources
With our curriculum / teaching resources (Readtopia and First Author), the company, Building Wings, will be able to focus more directly on the specific needs of special education classrooms and students with autism and other complex needs.
If you’re a Don Johnston customer and working with Don Johnston specialists, you will continue working with the same people (same email addresses, phone numbers, and everything). We want to keep continuity and keep business as usual. Eventually, our curriculum team will get buildingwings.com email address and we’ll launch a new dedicated website sometime in the next few months.
Wow. Huge news. And happy to share it with all of you!
Here are some FAQs:
https://learningtools.donjohnston.com/texthelp-don-johnston-faqs/
…and a bit more on the announcement:
https://learningtools.donjohnston.com/2022/01/texthelp-and-don-johnston-incorporated-join-forces/
