Your Therapy Source Magazine for Pediatric Therapists August 2016 Issue #86 | Page 19

NEW HANDWRITING APP – HANDWRITING HEROES CREATED BY AN OT
Handwriting Heroes is a new handwriting app developed by Cheryl
Bregman who is an occupational therapist. You may be familiar
with her from another amazing app she created Abilipad which is
a customizable keyboard and adaptive notepad, with word
prediction and text-to-speech. I asked Cheryl to answer a few
questions about her career and her development of apps from an
OT perspective. (This post contains affiliate links).
Q: First just tell a little bit about yourself – job experience, years
on the job, etc.
After qualifying as an occupational therapist from UCT in South
Africa, I moved to the US and have been working as a pediatric OT
for the past 20 years. I love being an occupational therapist for the
flexibility that one has to facilitate learning in non-traditional and
multisensory ways. I am married, and have two gorgeous children.
Q: What made you come up with the idea of creating apps in addition to being an
occupational therapist?
It was not planned. I developed my handwriting methodology over many years and had
excellent success helping children. Given that it is that it is based on interactive stories, I felt
that it would be well presented in an animated form. So, when iPads were first introduced, I
found a programmer to work on it. At the same time, I was working with a young student who
had autism, who enjoyed writing on the iPad but would become “stuck” because the keyboard
keys were in upper case and his words were being typed in lower case. I decided to hold off on
my handwriting app, and to “quickly” make a lower case keyboard, named Abilipad. Abilipad
ended up taking three years because users kept asking for additional features.
Once Abilipad was completed, I was able to refocus on Handwriting Heroes. It has been
tremendously beneficial to my therapy and to my apps to be able to do both in sync.
Q: Your previous app, Abilipad, was a real game changer are you hoping for the same
with Handwriting Heroes?
Abilipad’s impact in the world of assistive technology was to significantly decrease the cost of
literacy support (i.e. word prediction, text-to-speech, adapted keyboards). Since it was the first
adaptive notepad and keyboard on the iPad, larger companies had to follow suit with their
pricing.
Handwriting Heroes is my absolute treasure. For fear of being overstated, it encompasses over
a decade of practice-based research and development, and every ounce of creative energy that

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