Press Release

Penfriend Ltd
30 South Oswald Road
Edinburgh
EH9 2HG
Tel 0131 668 2000
Fax 0131 668 2121

Press Release

Penfriend and UK Online

Penfriend XP has been chosen to be part of the assistive technology package to the UK Online centre initiative.

Penfriend is a powerful tool for adding word prediction, speech and an onscreen keyboard to almost any other software. It helps those with dyslexia and physical disabilities to write faster and its speech facility can read material from the web or almost any other document.

The Department for Education and Skills has awarded £1.4m to provide assistive technology for over 800 of the UK Online centres in England. The project aims to make the Internet accessible to everyone and is managed by Becta, the Government's lead agency for information and communication technology (ICT) in education.

What does a UK online centre offer?
UK online centres are aimed at people with low information and communications technology skills and those who cannot afford Internet access at home. They are part of a Government objective to provide a network of 6,000 centres in England, to give all citizens the opportunity to access the Internet. This access is an important prerequisite to all government services being online by 2005. They could be in an Internet café, in a public library, a college, a community centre, a mobile centre, or anywhere available to the public.

As well as providing access to the Internet and email, the centres have a role to ensure that individual needs are catered for, to offer guidance and support and to explore opportunities for further learning through ICT.

Becta is delivering the project which is being implemented by Inclusive Technology. It supports the UK Government and national organisations in the use and development of ICT in education to raise standards, widen access, improve skills and encourage effective management.

Software and access devices have been chosen that will enhance access to the Internet and amongst these Penfriend XP has been included to provide word prediction and speech output.