The best news since spell-checkers for people with learning disabilities is a raft of new software designed to help compensate for some weaknesses and provide strength training to overcome others. Some of that software is designed specifically to help organize thinking or to help keep users on task. The rest are adaptations of programs developed for the physically challenged. Text-to-speech programs have been adapted to help with reading and voice recognition to help with writing. 

Several brands are on the market containing variations on each of the four broad categories of software useful to those with learning disabilities. Some companies bundle several kinds of programs into one package and consultants have appeared on the scene who specialize in identifying and custom fitting the right programs and other tools to individual needs. 

Most if not all the software developers have Web sites and a number of organizations and dealers list links to many of them. Once you get into one Web site of the far-flung LD (that's shorthand for learning disability) community, you can follow links to any number of organizations and service providers. As good a place as any to start is a Minnesota group called Closing the Gap (http://www.closingthegap.com). 

One consultant who sells equipment and software besides advising people on what is right for them is Martin Tibor. His company, based in San Rafael, Calif., is called Synapse Adaptive. He refers to himself as a ''solution provider'' and he says he has a database of 20,000 individual clients. Among them are people such as an editor for a major San Francisco newspaper and others who, based on their jobs, one might not expect to have learning disabilities, said Tibor. 

There is a longstanding debate among educators about how best to deal with learning disabilities. Those who believe in remedial solutions argue that technology often provides little more than a crutch that hinders people in the long run. The so-called ''compensatory'' camp says there is no reason why people who can be helped by technology should not make full use of it. 

Tibor takes the position that a lot of the available hardware and software does both. It compensates for weaknesses and helps teach good habits. He argues that, at its best, assistive technology facilitates learning. 

Because there are so many products to choose from and because diagnosing learning disabilities is as much an art as it is a science, much of Tibor's work involves assessing the particular strengths of available tools and designing packages to suit individual needs. 

Voice recognition is about as good as it is going to get, said Tibor. ''It's a pretty mature technology,'' he said. 

Dragon Systems Inc. in Newton produces one such program called Dragon Naturally Speaking. With some practice, one can achieve 98 to 99 percent accuracy while talking at a rate of 160 words a minute, according to Tibor, bypassing the need to be able to type in order to write on a computer. Among others, people with a variety of attention disorders might be helped by this technology because it gives a more rapid and less cumbersome connection to the written word. 

Optical character recognition technology - which is the basis for text-to-speech applications - has found its way into a variety of programs that help people read. But unless printed material is already in a digital form, using this type of software requires a scanner for converting words on a page into something the computer can manipulate. 

There are several brands of this software, one being Kurzweil 3000 made by Lernout & Hauspie in Burlington. This program offers users a number of strategies for improving reading. It will not only convert text to speech but it will display the text on the screen and highlight it in a number of different ways while it is reading it aloud. Users can opt for silent reading. One can speed it up, slow it down, have the word being read magnified with a different colored background. You can also magnify the whole screen to your preference. Another feature is a built-in dictionary that defines words you click on. 

Programs like these often come with collections of literature already on compact discs to make them accessible to people who have a hard time reading. Activists are pressing publishers to make more books available on disc. 

Kurzweil 3000 has a word-prediction program built in that is similar to other brands such as Co-Writer made by Don Johnston Inc. in Volo, Ill. This is a program designed to help people whose minds wander easily to stay on track while they are writing. It is also a useful organizational tool for people who find it hard to string words together into sentences. The way it works is that as one types, the program posts a list of up to 10 words that might follow logically into the sentence. As one starts writing a word, the program will modify that list to fit the first letters chosen. It lets the writer cut directly to one of the words on the list to speed typing. 

Programs like these are useful for staying focused on a writing task. They also help direct people to the proper forms of the words they want to use. 

Another program on the market designed to help writers organize thoughts is called Inspiration and is made by a company of that name in Portland, Ore. This software can be used by individuals or by a teacher with an entire class. It takes ideas gathered in a ''brainstorming'' session and then displays them in ways useful for producing a finished written product. Once a series of ideas is entered into the program they can be manipulated into a variety of kinds of outlines, some more linear and others more web-like. 

Tibor, of Synapse Adaptive (http://www.synapseadaptive.com), said that as he becomes more and more attuned to learning disabilities he spots them in many people who may not have been aware that they have them. Computer and other information technology is providing a constantly expanding menu of tools and approaches for managing and overcoming differences in the way people process information, he said. 

Interestingly, computers also have played a role in bringing certain disabilities to light, according to Tibor. What he calls the ''man-machine link'' puts humans, who are infinitely varied in the way they think, in contact with machines, which operate along highly predictable rules. When you are communicating with another human that person will make unconscious allowances for your style that a computer won't. ''How people function is magnified by this machine,'' said Tibor. 

Learning and communication styles come in a long and complex continuum of strengths and weaknesses. So it makes sense that a small industry is emerging around computer hardware - and especially software - that tries to dissect and in some ways re-create the writer's art by mechanizing aspects of the thought process. The Writers Store in Los Angeles, Calif., (http://www.writerscomputer.com) offers dozens of programs that promise to abet would-be scribes in the production of masterpieces in any number of genres. 

One of the few certainties about how electronics will affect the way we receive and impart information in the future is that those of us who were amazed by spell-checkers a mere decade ago will be in for a few more surprises before we are through. 

This story ran on page N05 of the Boston Globe on 1/2/2000. 

© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.