portable spell checkers - any good?

[sphil]

DS1 is 8 and has been diagnosed with dyspraxia. Both his handwriting and spelling are poor - way below average for his age. However, he is bright, knowledgeable, a voracious reader and has many good ideas - he just can't get much down on paper. We are having an OT assessment next week which I hope will address the motor skills, but we also need to tackle the spelling issue, which holds him up a great deal when he's writing.

Do any of your children use portable spellcheckers? I remember when I was teaching, a few kids used them, but they weren't much good - however, this was 10 years ago and I have a feeling technology may have advanced a bit since then .
TIA

I bought one for (dyslexic) DS1 when he went into secondary school, but I don't think it got used much at school tbh as it just slowed him down even more.

When DS2 (even more dyslexic) started at a new school in Australia aged 8 the teacher let him use the computer - with spellcheck - for written work in class, it made a huge difference and meant he could keep up with the others. Technology will probably be the way to go with your DS - is there any chance he can use a laptop at school?

I think that might be the way to go, though at this stage I think the teachers are loath to abandon handwriting completely. And he's not much quicker on it anyway - he's quite disorganised, so work is always getting deleted, formatted wrongly, etc etc.