Visual-Spatial and Motor Control Difficulties

Students with disabilities, especially those with visual-spatial or motor control difficulties, may often experience trouble with writing numbers, creating visual representation, and aligning digits in computation problems (Dell, Newton, Petroff, 2012).  For students who have difficulties with visual-spatial and motor control, specific educational applications such as MathPad and/or MathPad Plus can assist them by minimizing handwriting.

 MathPad is a math program that consists of talking worksheets and allows students to perform mathematical computations using a computer, rather than paper and pencil.  This program has many features that can benefit all types of learners; customizable speech output for students who are visually impaired, use of a keyboard or mouse for students with poor fine motor skills, and scanning features to assist those students with severe disabilities.  

"MathPad Plus extends all of the features of MathPad to arithmetic computations with fractions and decimals" (Dell, Newton, Petroff, 2012).  This program has several additional features that are available to assist students in their learning, as well as giving students the options to view problems in a variety of forms; pie charts, fraction bars, decimal grids.  

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MathPad

MathPad Plus

References:

Dell, A.G., Newton, D.A., Petroff, J.G. (2012).  Assistive Technology in the Classroom; Enhancing the School Experience for Students with Disabilities. 2nd Edition.