Here's my weekly gathering of products, events, and stories of interest that have landed in my e-mail queue or otherwise caught my attention this week:
+ Netbuddy, a UK resource that was a Readers' Choice Awards nominee in 2011 for Best Special-Needs Online Community, has assembled a transition info pack to help families of children with learning disabilities make the leap from childhood to adulthood. It joins info packs on audiology, siblings, arts and leisure, sexuality and relationships, challenging behaviour, holidays, apps, jobs and training, and financial help.
+ From the page for Party Planning for Children and Teens on the Autism Spectrum: How to Avoid Meltdowns and Have Fun! on the Jessica Kingsley Publishers site, you can access a video of the author giving her top tips, and from there a sample of a visual invitation as mentioned in the book.
+ According to a press release, the communication app Proloquo2Go now has children's voices that actually sound like children's voices. "Acapela Group and AssistiveWare are proud to unveil the first American genuine, natural-sounding children's voices now available in Proloquo2Go, designed to provide a voice for children who cannot speak.... The American children voices, Josh and Ella, were recorded by and for children. Users can select the authentic boy or girl as their preferred Text to Speech voice to speak a want, need or thought using symbol-based communication or typing with word-prediction." The voices are available on a free Proloquo2Go update now, and will be made available to other developers in December.
+ There's a new petition at Change.org calling for Yahoo! to add support for closed-captioning to its video player, just like Hulu, Google, Netflix, and others. If you think they need to get with it already, add your name.
Do you have good books, apps, sites, or products to call to our attention? Write a book or app review, submit a site or blog, and post in the marketplace section of the forum.
Photo by Terri Mauro