Texthelp was founded by McKay in 1996, to help people with communication difficulties. With its headquarters in Northern Ireland, Texthelp also has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, and Australia. Texthelp has 40 million users using its suite of software which currently includes Read&Write, Equatio, WriQ, Fluency Tutor, ReachDeck, and Speechstream. This suite of software works with both Microsoft Office and G-Suite. The software’s importance and popularity with schools has grown tremendously since the start of the pandemic.
Martin McKay has a personal motivation behind his venture. When he was 12, his father suffered a serious stroke. At that time, there was no software available to help his father with communication. When he met his future wife, she had a number of dyslexic students that he was also motivated to help. McKay has had an impressive history, serving on the board of the Assistive Technology Industry Association, being a member of NIMAS (National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard), part of United States Office of Special Education Program (OSEP), and being an advisor to Universal Design Council. He also won the 2017 Presidential Award from the International Dyslexia Association for his work.
Under the direction of McKay and his team, Texthelp has survived for over twenty five years in the competitive world of educational technology. They must be doing something right as they have also been award winners recently. The Texthelp group received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in international trade in April 2021.