Assistive Tech: Text-to-Speech with Learning Ally

Learning Ally is a great, "old-school" assistive tech tool for struggling readers

(Please note that I am NOT being paid to recommend products. I am just a real SLP, trying to do the best I can for my students!)

In recent years, I've found myself in the position of having to advocate for my dyslexic students. School-based SLPs commonly have dyslexic students on their caseloads; This is because dyslexia is a common, language-based disorder. Also, dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD) commonly co-occur (along with ADHD).

Once dyslexic students move beyond the third grade, it is often the case that their classroom reading requirements surpass their abilities, either due to the difficulty level or the sheer volume of material they have to read.

While I think targeted reading instruction should remain a priority for these students, assistive tech should also be brought on board to help make academic demands more manageable. Making reading easier for these students will have positive impacts across the board, from increased vocabulary growth (see my post here on the Matthew Effect in reading/vocabulary) to improved confidence as they understand how to manage their difficulties.

While I've been very excited about the recent advances and increased accessibility with text-to-speech technology, there is one "old-school" text-to-speech tool out there that is, as of yet, unbeatable when compared with AI-based reading tools. This is because AI still makes weird mistakes as it reads, such as mispronouncing words and misinterpreting punctuation. While seemingly small issues, these little glitches can cause significant confusion for my students.

Enter Learning Ally!

Learning Ally is a nonprofit education organization that provides human-read audiobooks for students in Pre-K to 12th grade with reading difficulties, visual impairments, or other physical disabilities.

As SLPs, we can get a "referral account" at Learning Ally, which is free. Families can get an account for the year for $135, but it goes down to $108 with our referral (per Learning Ally, SLPs can diagnose a reading deficit in order to refer students), according to a representative I spoke with. I'm guessing these numbers are subject to change, so make sure you look into this before setting up an account. Schools can also get a membership for all their students.

As for Learning Ally's book selection, the representative I spoke with told me, "If it's used in K-12, there's a good chance we have the book." This has rung true so far for me. They appear to have over 10,000 book titles available.

Learning Ally books come in one of the following formats:

"Classic Audio," where a human narrator reads the book (similar to a traditional audiobook), but with no accompanying text.

"Voice Text," where a human narrator reads the book while the text is displayed onscreen and highlighted as the narrator reads.

I much prefer the Voice Text option, so struggling readers can see the words being read. Even though they're not actively decoding with this setup, I still think there's value in their being able to see the words as they're read, which I hope will still support their vocabulary and orthographic mapping to some extent.

Let me know if you give it a try!

And if you need any research-based therapy materials...

LEVEL UP YOUR SPEECH LANGUAGE THERAPY ACTIVITIES WITH STORYWHYS

Did you find this blog post helpful? Subscribe below to get the latest blog posts, which feature lots of speech therapy ideas for busy SLPs who want to provide fun, impactful, and meaningful speech-language therapy.

StoryWhys now offers the Speech and Spell series of resources. I am always trying to tie articulation work and spelling together in my therapy, and I've never found any good resources out there to help me do this. So I made my own! Many more speech sounds and spelling rules to come. They'll be 50% off for 48 hrs when new resources are added to the StoryWhys store. Find them here.

Did you know book companions can be among the best speech therapy materials for elementary students? Explore all of the StoryWhys book companions for speech therapy in my store. You'll find comprehensive book companions that target many different language skills or Spotlight Series book companions that focus on one type of skill, all using high-quality, beloved storybooks.

For quick videos to help you get the most from StoryWhys book companions, check out the YouTube channel here.

And get a FREE, 71-page book companion for speech therapy on the free downloads page.

Enjoy!