Technology Breaks Distance Learning Barrier For Disabled Students

Pneuma Solutions launched a free service that redefines the way students with special needs are provided with instructional materials. Based on Pneuma's Augmented Document Remediation technology, Scribe for Education allows teachers in K-12 to upload image files to a secure cloud service that provides near real time conversion to a variety of text and audio formats like Braille, large print, and MP3 for use by disabled students. The service fills an essential gap as school districts flip from traditional classrooms to distance learning programs.

"Students with disabilities have trouble accessing printed school materials in a timely manner under the best of circumstances," says Mike Calvo, founder and CEO of Pneuma Solutions. "With so many of us teaching from home during the pandemic, technologies that convert documents into special formats need to be available with no need for complicated training. I want to use our technology in a way that ensures students with disabilities are not left behind no matter who is educating them."

Themselves blind individuals and trainers of the print-impaired, Calvo and lead developer, Matt Campbell, understand the challenges teachers face in accommodating students with disabilities. Under this initiative, teachers and parents can trust the strength of the company's commercial product to help students with special needs keep pace in a way that is free, reliable, and intuitive using nothing more than a web browser.

"To the average person, access to the printed word is taken for granted," says Campbell. "By providing teachers direct access to our cloud-based tools, specially formatted materials can be reproduced, by the teacher or parent, for disabled students at the same time as their nondisabled peers. Scribe for Education can redefine the way they learn."