Founder: Martin McKay, Co-founder and CEO
Venture: TextHelp is a literacy and numeracy software development company, with Read & Write, eQuatio, BrowseAsloud, wriQ as the signature products. Accessibility is a key component and value of the company, with a focus on Text-to-speech and note taking solutions that reduce cognitive load for students.
Bio: McKay has been described as a ‘technology visionary’ and was a co-founder of TextHelp in 1996. He attributes his interest in assistive technology to the experiences he had as a youth with his father losing his ability to speak and read after a stroke. Martin was a finalist for Ireland’s entrepreneur of the year in 2022, with acquisitions in USA, Norway and Denmark of direct competitors.
My thoughts: McKay has a compelling vision of accessibility and focuses on that in a singular way to drive success forward. McKay has had a hand in broadening the scope of what we think is possible regarding assistive technology, with simple and usable products that are flexible across digital platforms.
Resources:
Enabling each student to have access to educational opportunities regardless of ability / disability is extremely important in education. I am a big fan of Read and Write and I was instrumental in ordering it in a previous school. The IT department purchased the software licences (Google Extension) for the all students in the senior school. Some of the ways over the years I have used Read and Write as a French teacher are:
– Text-to-speech for students who need to develop their listening skills (pronunciation for example)
– Speech-to-text for stronger students who can speak well but whose writing needs to be improved.
– Study tools (highlighter) to get students to group words into categories (verbs, nouns, adjectives etc)
If many investment consultants say to invest in a service or product that you believe in, then this is one that I would get behind.