The Truth about Spellcheckers
June 26, 2008
Ghotit
There are various misconceptions about spellcheckers. This article aims to clarify some important points.
Almost all wordprocessors, computer software or hardware notetakers, have a spellchecker, however there is a great variety in quality betweeen the best and the worst. This is rarely recognised. The Study carried out by CALL Scotland in 1999 called - Supportive Writing Technology included the only comparative study of spellcheckers. It is still valid. Unfortunately some of the best have disappeared from the market - The Apple Emate for example. Many of the poorest have not got any better. The Alphasmart series of Note takers still have a poor spellchecker. Microsoft Word is still a decent spellchecker but not the best. The very good Franklin Elementary Spellmaster has been discontinued. However its alogorhythm has been incorporated into the Write Out Loud talking word processor. very good, but still has some weaknesses.
Very few people are aware of these great differences. The CALL Scotland results can be viewed in the on-line document; http://callcentre.education.ed.ac.uk/downloads/swbook/swbook12-15.pdf
I have investigated the spellcheckers in word processing software aimed at pupils with spoelling difficuluties. In some cases, they have proved to less effective at identifying the intended word than MS Word. I feel that producers of these packages are being rather cynical.
It would be really good to have a basic word processing package with good spellchecker running under Linux. This could be very useful if installed on the new range of Asus EePC/RM Minibooks. The spellchecker in the open-source Open Office is poor compared with MS Word.
So it all bad news then? Not a lot has happened since the CALL SCotland report in 1999? Well, yes. However yesterday I received an email from CALL Scotland about Ghotit;
This on-line spellchecker seems to very good. I hope that CALL Scotland will do a comparative review of Ghotit using the same set of misspelt words that they used in the 1999 study. In the meantime you can judge it for yourself; http://www.ghotit.com/
This new development really cheered me up. There is someone who cares about the quality of spellcheckers and recognises that dyslexics can benefit much more from a good quality spellchecker. It is not clear, from the website, where this devlopment is leading. I hope to a simple text editor with built in qulaity spellchecker - for Linux, Mac and PC. Even a web only version would be very welcome.
I hope to find out soon. Watch this space.
Posted by ictsan
Producing accessible versions of novels to be used by V.I. pupils who need large print or disabled pupils who cannot turn the the pages, is a task that many support staff are involved in. Where a classic text is needed, it can usually be found at the project Gutenberg;
It has been clear for a while that mp3 players would be excellent devices for the visually impaired. However, many have very small displays that make them unusable by VI users. This new device is a lot more than just an mp3 player. However it is most notable for being on of the few devices of its kind with voice output to allow navigation. It has no screen and all the commands are entered via key presses. The results are heard as spoken prompts.
Thanks to the CALL Centre, Edinburgh University, I have been able to use the newly licensed Scottish voice Heather. I have used it to create audio versions of text files. These have been prepared for a VI pupil who will listening to them using a Victor Reader Stream which will be the subject of a blog very soon, I hope.



