Students with Disabilities

Assistive Technology

Assistive technologies are specifically designed to increase, maintain, or improve the participation of people with disability in education, work and life in general. Read here for more information about the use of Assistive Technology with university studies.

UTAS IT Services provides four Assistive Technology software solutions (see below) to assist students with disabilities to access and to participate in their studies.

We also manage in collaboration with Accessibility Services, the Student Access Study Centre(SASC) located on the Sandy Bay campus. This offers specialised equipment in a fully accessible study environment. For further information about SASC, please contact Accessibility Services on 1800 817 675 or via email at Accessibility.Services@utas.edu.au.

The following Assistive Software is available for UTAS students. Please contact Accessibility Services to arrange access.

• JAWS - for blind or vision impaired users. This screen reader provides speech and braille output for most computer applications.
  Find out more about JAWS or hear from other UTAS students who use JAWS.
• ZoomText - for vision impaired users. This magnifier and reader enlarges everything on your computer screen, echoes typing, and automatically reads documents, web pages, and email.
  Find out more about ZoomText or hear from other UTAS students who use ZoomText.
• Dragon Naturally Speaking – speech to text software. This allows the user to speak and watch words appear on the screen, with up to 99% recognition accuracy.
  Find out more about Dragon or hear from other UTAS students who use speech recognition software.
• Read and Write – for learning difficulties or specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia. This reads text, checks grammar and spelling, helps organise and proof written work.
  Find out more about using Read and Write at university or hear from other UTAS students using this software.

Read & Write is available on all UTAS centrally managed computers. If you are having issues with this, then please contact the Service Desk directly.
If you have an active UTAS account, you can use these easy steps to download Read and Write on your own computer or device. Installing Read and Write 12 (PDF 430.7 KB)

If you require alternative assistive software please discuss this with your Accessibility Advisor.