Iván Naranjo
Iván Naranjo lives in Chile and is one of the very first to use the Sonidos y Letras software from AyudaTec. With this software, he is learning to read and write in Spanish. Ivan’s disabilities prohibit him from using a mouse, and this software automatically works with his special IntelliKeys keyboard. Donations to AyudaTec bring people like Ivan, along with his able-bodied peers throughout Latin America, the gift of literacy.
Helping Students with Disabilities
AyudaTec pays special attention to students with disabilities. The AyudaTec founders are leaders in the vibrant Assistive Technology movement, which deploys creative computer technologies to help people with physical, visual, and cognitive disabilities to learn, communicate, and live to their fullest potential. AyudaTec takes these technologies to Latin America, where they are dearly needed.

Some facts:
  1. Many children with disabilities are being accepted in mainstream schools in Latin America.
  2. Many schools have computers.
  3. Most of the teachers in Latin American countries teach between 30 and 50 students with and without disabilities at the same time. Many of the students will never catch up with their classmates without having access to the right technology.
  4. Most of the existing technologies in the US that have helped thousands of students with disabilities are not available in Spanish.
  5. Many students with physical or/and cognitive disabilities will never learn anything with regular books for several reasons:
    • The books are hard to understand
    • Physically, many students can’t even open them
    • Some students need more help, more repetition and more practice than others. Books offer a limited amount of exercises.
    • Some students need auditory and visual content to learn and to keep them interested in learning more
AyudaTec is advocating in the US to:
  1. Help students with disabilities succeed in Latin American schools.
  2. Help teachers learn how to use existing computers more effectively in their classrooms.
  3. Organize training for teachers in Latin America
  4. Make existing technologies available in Spanish
  5. Help students with disabilities gain literacy skills through our software, which includes various built-in features. For example, it supports seamless use with the IntelliKeys alternative keyboard, switch scanning, includes recorded speech en español, etc.
A few success stories:
  1. Claudia Marimón (Chile) has found that children with some hearing loss, are benefiting from using AyudaTec software because they can repeat every sound as many times as needed
  2. Gabriela Berlanga (Mexico) was surprised when one of her students was able to show the therapists that he is able to learn how to read & write by using our software. She said that they have used other programs before, but none of them kept the student’s interest so he was not responding correctly to questions. When the student tried our software, he was very interested in responding and especially loved the reward system of our phonemic awareness activities.
  3. Our song to learn the vowels was written by Chilean Speech Therapists, yet students in Mexico loved the song and said that it really helped them to remember the letters!