iReadWrite for iPad-Powerful Tools for Writing

It is really exciting to see the traditional publishers of assistive technology jumping into the app marketplace and providing end users with powerful new apps that pack a lot of features. I had the good fortune to be able to review iReadWrite from TextHelp, Inc. which was recently released and am very impressed with the feature set. This is TextHelp's first foray into the iPad marketplace but they have been long standing publishers of Read Write Gold on the Windows/Mac platform and have a great deal of experience providing students with assistive technology supports.

iReadWrite is a well designed app that works as advertised.  It provides students with text-to-speech , word prediction and vocabulary support. iReadWrite does not require an internet connection to utilize the program which is ideal for students who may be in schools with poor web connectivity. At the time of this writing iReadWrite can open rtf. and txt. files. Students will quickly grasp how to use the word prediction feature which is a real strength of the program. I have worked with some students who have dropped out vowels and iReadWrite was still able to predict the word. iReadWrite has one of the most powerful word prediction features that I have seen to date for iPad apps. However, I would like to see some way for students to be able select the predicted word from the list, when they are using a Bluetooth keyboard. Perhaps having the first ten word numbered that can be entered via a number key from the keyboard could work. Utilizing the Swipe feature students will be able to quickly enter the words into the writing area. If a student is unsure of which word to use- they can hold their finger down and up pops the definition with a picture support. This vocabulary feature is well designed and implemented and will be very helpful for students when they are writing. In addition to spell checking, iReadWrite also does homonym checking and will look for those confusable words that students often use which are incorrect. This feature is easy to use and students will quickly see which words were flagged as iReadWrite changes the font to Blue. When students have completed their written work they can export the text to: Mail. Message, Twitter, and Facebook. They can also copy the text and paste it into another app if they prefer. It would be nice to be able to Print directly from iReadWrite, but maybe that is a feature for a future upgrade. Short of some minor feature requests, iReadWrite provides students with a robust set of tools that will help them in the area of reading and writing. TextHelp, Inc has done a tremendous job of creating an app that is both powerful and full featured for the iOS platform and educators need to include this in their AT Toolkit when making recommendations.

I have included a screencast that takes a quick tour around iReadWrite: