The effects of two assistive technologies on reading comprehension accuracy and rate

This study compared the effectiveness of two assistive technologies to accommodate the word reading skills of four middle school students with reading learning disabilities. Kurzweil 3000 is a continuous text-to-speech (TTS) computer software program that allows students to follow along on a computer monitor while passages are read aloud. A reading pen is a discontinuous TTS assistive technology (AT) device that allows students to scan and hear selected words read aloud. An adapted alternating treatments design was implemented to compare the effects of listening-while-reading using continuous TTS AT, discontinuous TTS AT, and silently reading without accommodation on reading comprehension accuracy and rate. Results indicate that in three of the four participants, continuous TTS technology led to the greatest improvements in both comprehension accuracy and rate when compared to silent reading with effect sizes reaching 0.70 and 0.99, respectively. The fourth participant demonstrated the highest comprehension accuracy and rate in the discontinuous TTS condition. The discontinuous TTS condition led to the lowest comprehension rates across all four students. Additionally, participants generally found the continuous TTS AT to be the more acceptable of the two accommodations. Discussion focuses on possible theoretical explanations for the results and implications for future research.