Assistive Technology: Kurzweil 3000

By / / Design Critiques

Kurzweil 3000 has been created to assist students with learning disabilities; mainly for users who have dyslexia. It offers text-to-speech, study skills, and reading comprehension assistance  to assist users with  reading and writing. Therefore, it makes the process of accessing the educational content  easier, and in turn, enhances the quality and frequency of learning and understanding on the part of the user.

Accessibility and Kurzweil 3000

As explained in the e-Accessibility Toolkit, an accessible product is that product which can be used by the largest number of people with various disabilities. In this case, the Kurzweil 3000 can be classified as an accessible product since it complies with three aspects of accessibility; namely utility, usability, and compatibility. Essentially, it assists many people with reading and learning disabilities to read and understand information within the required time frame assigned.

Kurzweil 3000 is a product  that, in its features, exemplifies aspects of various models of disability as we will dive deeper into the product’s functionalities and discuss them within the light of the medical, social, and functional models of disability below:

1.  Text to Speech (TTS) with Highlighting
Disability Model: Medical Model

The medical model of disability is that disability is a biological cause which requires a cure or control. In this regard, the TTS feature of Kurzweil  3000 is most relevant to this approach because it offers the user, who may have  dyslexia and finds it difficult to transform written words into oral words, a technological solution to the problem. In essence, the tool compensates by converting text to speech, thus enabling the user to understand written educational information. 

2. Dictionaries and Comprehension Tools that are Built-in
Disability Model: Social Model

According to the social model of disability, it  is the environmental or social barriers + poor designing, and not the impairment that cause disability. Kurzweil 3000 has integrated dictionaries and comprehension tools to break the sociocultural barriers to learning. The traditional learning environments are not very friendly to disabled learners, but the Kurzweil 3000 has made it  easier to understand the lessons through its adaptive tools that encourage participation. Instead of making students fit into the reading “norms” that are established from an ableist point of view, the software itself adjusts to the needs of the learner, thus making learning more inclusive. 

 3. Writing Aid: Voice Recognition
Disability Model: Functional Solutions Model

The functional solutions model is about solving the problems in order to break through the limitations. The recent upgrade of the Kurzweil 3000 includes the voice recognition feature that is useful for students with  dysgraphia or other motor disabilities who can use the voice to compose their work. This reduces the need  for the student to write or type sentences, which means that many classroom and workplace activities can be modified  to be more accessible. In one way, the Kurzweil 3000 has enhanced the quality  of life of people with disabilities through enhanced productivity and independence. 

Final Takeaways 

Kurzweil 3000 is a good example of an assistive technology that breaks down learning barriers in multiple ways. It offers TTS, comprehension tools, and voice recognition, all of which show the commitment to inclusion. It also complies with a number of disability models, and most notably, it represents the social and functional solutions models that focus on the removal of barriers rather than on the impairment itself. 

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