Interactive Reading Apps that Promote Family Literacy
Repost from The NEAT Newsletter; Oak Hill’s NEAT Center
Reading is one of the most beneficial activities that families can enjoy together, and interactive apps that provide read-aloud and other AT-related features can remove barriers caused by dyslexia and other learning disabilities. During your next family reading hour, check out the following apps that can make reading fun and accessible:
This collection of three apps helps emerging readers develop a love for words. Endless Alphabet helps kids learn letter sounds and basic vocabulary. Endless Reader is a step up and presents vocabulary in the context of complete sentences. Endless Wordplay takes kids through a series of spelling lessons that utilize rhyming and phonetic patterns. In all three apps, kids are asked to drag and drop letters and words, and they stay engaged by watching humorous animated scenes featuring cartoon creatures.
Novel Effect makes reading aloud a multisensory experience for the whole family. It contains a library of books that are accompanied by music, sound effects, and character voices. Once you start reading a book aloud, the app listens for just the right moments to play sounds that make the story come alive. It is available in three versions: Free, Premium, and Premium Classroom.
Often used in schools, Epic! contains thousands of books and audiobooks from leading publishers like Scholastic, National Geographic, and HarperCollins. For kids who have difficulty with reading, the app’s Read-to-Me books combine audio recordings with synchronized highlighting of the text to provide a multisensory reading experience.
The Kids A-Z app provides access to readings from Raz-Kids, Raz-Plus, Headsprout, and Science A-Z. In addition to providing audio recordings with synchronized highlighting of the text, the app also provides interactive annotation tools and comprehension quizzes to support close reading skills.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown’s Classics Bundle
If you regularly watch the Charlie Brown holiday television specials as a family, you’ll want to add these digital book versions to your annual traditions. Produced by Loud Crow Interactive, these apps present the Charles Schulz stories as interactive “pop-up” books that contain background music and optional audio narration with synchronized highlighting of the text. The bundle includes A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and Charlie Brown’s All-Stars.
People with documented print disabilities like dyslexia and blindness can access audiobooks from Learning Ally. The books can be listened to using the Learning Ally Audiobooks app. Several titles in the audiobook library include accompanying text that can be followed while listening. The text appearance can be visually customized and annotated.
Dolphin EasyReader is similar to the Kindle app from Amazon. It lets readers collect eBooks in a virtual bookshelf and offers a handful of accessibility features to support people with print disabilities. Text can be customized visually, and the integrated text-to-speech contains dual-color synchronized highlighting. Books can be downloaded directly into the app from a variety of sources, including Bookshare, Project Gutenberg, and epubBooks.
Voice Dream Reader is a great option to make reading accessible on mobile devices. It collects eBooks in a virtual bookshelf and gives users many options to customize the reading experience. There are many visual settings that allow readers to see the words exactly how they desire, users can make in-app purchases to add high-quality text-to-speech voices, and the text can be annotated with highlighting and pop-up notes. Books and readings can be imported from a variety of sources, including Bookshare, Project Gutenberg, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
-Submitted by Jamie Martin, AT Specialist
