Struggling with spelling? Global Autocorrect could help.

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Who might this blog post be useful for?: This software has helped people with literacy difficulties, fatigue, OCD, RSI and visual impairments.

What study skills challenges can this app help you overcome?: Problems with spelling, long periods of time wasted proof-reading text for spelling errors.

What is the tool or study skills strategy?: A customisable autocorrect software that fixes spelling errors automatically. This software is funded by DSA, please contact your Disability Advisor or Needs Assessor if you are interested.

Features:

  • Add and remove dictionaries as relevant for different subject areas
  • Autocorrect spelling mistakes
  • Reduces workload
  • Intelligent, discreet and easy to use
  • Available on Windows and Mac

Lexable’s Global Autocorrect offers a solution to something many students with disabilities or SpLDs struggle with: spell checking. Traditional spell checking software can sometimes leave you exhausted when it requires the user to go back and confirm or alter each word individually, Global AutoCorrect can help reduce fatigue and increase productivity, it removes the need to repeatedly press backspace, which has helped people with RSI, fatigue or who are on high doses of medication that impairs motor function or energy levels.

Global AutoCorrect (GAC) acts as an intermediary between your keyboard input (you typing) and output, or words as they appear on the screen. As such GAC works in any programme on your PC, including SPSS, Audio Notetaker, other assistive technology programmes or even typing into chat boxes on social media (although you can disable GAC on certain programmes if you like to use abbreviations/ colloquial slang on social media).

However, autocorrect software has some short-falls in terms of the possibility of correcting to the wrong word, which can be frustrating. As you can see below, when I open up the GAC programme to check my most often autocorrections, Mincome incorrectly changes to Minicam, Yarlswood to Earlswood, Mappin to Mapping etc.. To open up the window below, open GAC on your PC and either right click on the icon in your task bar and select ‘open Global AutoCorrect’, or press ctrl+shift+G.

screen shot of the Global AutoCorrect spelling corrections list.

This is forgivable however, as two out of the three words I just mentioned are specific (fairly obscure) locations, and the other is a name of a particular case study I was using for an essay. Because GAC kept trying to ‘correct’ these terms while I was writing an essay I decided to remove autocorrect for these words.

screen shot of a dialogue box explaining how to add an autocorrect entry using 'F2'.

To do this, I typed the word (Yarlswood) into any text box on any programme, and after I watched it autocorrect to Earslwood, I double clicked the word to select it and pressed F2 (on your keyboard you may have to press fn+F2 to execute this command), and the below dialogue box appeared.

screen shot of a dialogue box showing 'Earlswood' Autocorrected from 'Yarlswood and Yarslwood' followed by two options. 'Remove' or 'Cancel'

Select ‘remove’ then okay when the following dialogue box appears.

screen shot of a dialogue box asking 'do you want to stop autocorrecting to the following word?' "Earlswood". The options are Yes or No.

And you’re done! Global Autocorrect will stop correcting your word to the incorrect one.

screenshot of incorrect spelling 'Yarslwood' and correct spelling 'Yarlswood' with options 'OK' or 'Cancel'.

You might have noticed that I have previously misspelled Yarslwood as Yarslwood, and, now I have deleted the autocorrect entry for Yarslwood, if I mispell this again then it will not autocorrect at all. So I go back and create a new entry by selecting the incorrectly spelled word and pressing F2 (or fn+F2), then inputting the correct spelling as above…

 

GAC help and tutorials:

screen shot of a dialogue box reading 'Welcome to Global AutoCorrect, do you want to see how it works?' the options are 'Now' or 'Later'.

Global AutoCorrect comes with a PDF quick user guide and directs you to an interactive tutorial if you select ‘now’ when the above dialogue box appears.

Quick user guides and interactive tutorials for Global AutoCorrect on Mac and PC can be found on Lexable’s frequently asked questions page.

I have also written tutorials on how to customise and add dictionaries in Global AutoCorrect and how to add shortcuts and alerts in Global AutoCorrect on this blog.

You can access a free trial of Global AutoCorrect from Lexable’s website. You can also purchase Global AutoCorrect.

Thanks for reading,

Rachel