For students with poor manual dexterity, meeting the demands
of mathematics can be frustrating, time consuming and, at times, impossible.
AccessMaths has been specifically designed with such students in mind,
providing simple operation from the keyboard, mouse trackerball or Concept
Keyboard to give access to the tools and facilities necessary for the geometry
components of key stages 2, 3 & 4 of the British National Curriculum.
These days, using a computer to draw geometrical shapes is easy - providing
you can manipulate a mouse. However, most of the popular drawing packages
fail to address the needs of the user with limited physical abilities.
AccessMaths provides a range of input options to give these students full
and effective drawing facilities. The program is supported by resource materials - Shape and Space
Unlike other 'click and drag' drawing methods, the program approaches drawing
tasks using geometrical principles. Shapes are constucted as if you were
using a pencil, compass and ruler; you define reference points on the screen
- the ends of lines, centre points of arcs - and AccessMaths automatically
draws the shape. Help is available every step of the way via a Help Dialogue
Box.
Drawing Tools
Drawing tools allow the swift and accurate construction
of lines, squares, rectangles, circles, semi-circles, ellipses, triangles
(equilateral, isosceles and scalene), polygons (regular and irregular),
parallelograms arcs and pie charts, all of which may be annotated by arrows
and text. There are three preset Toolbox configuration levels to suit different
ability levels of use, and you can customise these by adding or deleting
tools, or create completely new configurations. The drawing tools are complemented
by a full set of editing facilities, including scale and rotation tools.
You can create grids to work on, import a background image and create and
edit text for annotating your drawings.
Measuring Tools
Three vital on-screen measuring tools - a ruler, protractor
and set square - are provided and can be manipulated freely around the
drawing area.
Activities
Three simple educational activities - an Abacus, Clock
and Number Line - are included within AccessMaths to give younger students
a friendly introduction to the world of mathematics. Images from all three
can be pasted directly into the main program as part of the drawing or
for printing.
Switch Access
Switch users can access the program through specialised
SAW Selection Sets.
AccessMaths V2.0
Requires:
IBM PC or compatible with 4Mb RAM and 1Mb of hard disk space.
Windows 3.1 or later
