Weighing in from personal experience rather than research. Because, frankly, if research that says you need to write by hand in order to learn was correct my DD would not have learned most of what she knows...

I noticed problems with DD's fine motor and hand-eye coordination before her 18 month check up but it took until age 5 to convince the pediatrician to refer her for an eval. By that time kindergarten was looming and the OT had to focus on getting her to be able to hold a pencil and try to form letters rather than the many OT tasks that should have been explored first. DD spent the next 7 years with OT's working on her handwriting. Painful, frustrating and not a good use of her time. By 4th grade the OT's said she wouldn't make much more progress and wanted to end the sessions. DD herself said "Mom you can't run away from your problems - you know that - right?" She then went on to explain she may not always have access to her technology and wanted to be able to write a short note by hand if needed so we continued working on handwriting even though we knew it would never be her means of communicating ideas.

In 5th grade we moved to cursive. Most schools no longer teach cursive but I had read (probably here...) that it's easier for many dysgraphic students because you don't have to pick the pencil up between letters. The OT's used the program ""Cursive Without Tears" which my daughter said "is most definitely cursive WITH tears for me..." She was not one who benefitted from cursive and still cannot read cursive - either handwritten or a font that resembles it. We dropped it in 6th grade in favor of an all AT approach.

I had been pushing AT since 1st grade and faced initial pushback from a well intentioned but woefully misinformed school OT who said it was not developmentally appropriate to introduce keyboarding prior to 4th grade. She insisted that kids needed to learn handwriting in the early grades or they would never develop the skill. (Once I convinced the 1st grade teacher to scribe a story for DD and she compared the level of detail in the 2 page result to the 4 or so handwritten lines DD was able to write herself in a longer amount of time she was convinced but couldn't do much to help convince the OT...) Got approved for an AT eval end of 1st grade but nothing was actually done until the end of 2nd grade. By third grade she was in a Spec Ed school with her program emphasizing AT.

We started with a chain of AT specialists who would introduce an app or program and then leave DD and her teachers to figure out how to implement it. There was a young Spec ed teacher at the school who took the lead on troubleshooting the AT but while better than handwriting still was far from streamlined. Each technology glitch derailed DD's ability to complete her work. She soon learned that she couldn't really rely on anything other than her ears and her spoken voice. She primarily came to rely on oral testing to show her knowledge. We did discover that the built in voice-to-text on iPad 2 or higher worked just fine with her voice after trying and failing to get Dragon to work early on.

Getting the right AT specialist was critical. In 6th grade our district placed her in their one day a week TAG program and actually contracted to bring in an OT to work with her for an hour developing whatever AT approach would be needed for that day's classwork. The OT's however refused to work with her on AT. Apparently at some point the 2 fields diverged. Older OT's were trained in AT but for younger ones it was a separate discipline. Much to DD's chagrine they insisted on using that hour to work on handwriting which had previously been declared futile. So while DD struggled to figure out AT solutions on her own (with technology that kept glitching and without the young sped teacher around to help troubleshoot) she also continued to work on handwriting. Very frustrating situation.

However somewhere in this process her handwriting actually improved. I don't know if it was developmental maturity or the unrelenting focus brought by the OT who refused to work on AT but her handwriting suddenly became somewhat legible. Still slow and with uneven sized and reversed letters but each letter was now legible. For the most part each word was legible. Definitely not age appropriate (probably at best 3rd grade level if that) but she could now write a short note, her name and maybe fill out a very brief form. Nothing that takes too much mental agility but with time and focus she can do it.

Simultaneously the iPad provided by our school district began to malfunction to the point of being almost useless. It would highlight and erase pages of text while she was working. Start reading aloud while she was voice recording so she would get double recordings. It would read back letter by letter instead of word by word. At one point it started reading back in Chinese. And there was no one there to help with it. Again she could only rely on her ears and her voice but now with a large, year long project that had to be completed for TAG.

After a few false starts we found the perfect AT person who said it was her job to not only determine the best technology, apps and programs but work with DD on knowing which to use when, troubleshoot, streamline, train the school and teachers, etc. THAT'S what you probably need. It took months to untangle all the mess created by previous AT snafu's. She had the school district purchase new equipment (DD uses a chromebook, an iPad Pro, iPhone 8 and an older mini she was gifted and used as a life preserver when the district issued iPad malfunctioned so badly.) She has a long list of apps and programs to do just about everything. The AT specialist's mantra is "Work smarter not harder" because DD had gotten used to just spending more and more hours doing things in a convoluted way when she had no AT support. (She would write, copy, edit, email to herself, copy, place in another app, etc whatever she needed to do when she didn't have a single program to do everything for her...) She worked with DD weekly and they went through every project or assignment DD had while she learned to streamline her process. The AT specialist also works with each teacher to assure they know what DD's process needs to look like. Both DD and the teachers have been traIned in how she uses voice notes. (She records the classes, can type shorthand notes to bookmark certain areas, take photos of the notes on the whiteboard, etc.) It's all way, way over my head but DD is now totally independent. They meet in person maybe once a month and the AT specialist zooms into her classes or to discuss any problems she's encountering. This past spring DD copresented with her at a conference for teachers and administrators explaining how AT makes her education possible.

Interestingly DD LOVES to write. She writes stories, songs, scripts. Whenever she has free time she writes. However the problems she experienced with the glitchy iPad a few years ago makes her reluctant to use voice to text even though it is MUCH faster when it works. She insists on typing everything which is a longer, harder process and her dyslexia means there are tons of spelling errors. She has some programs that allow her to move between keyboarding and voice recording it she gets really stuck on a word.

I'm not sure if this helps or if you are looking for more specifics about what programs and apps DD is using. If so maybe provide a specific list of tasks and I'll find out what DD is using. (ie a worksheet that can't be done by hand can be photographed, filled out on an iPad and printed, emailed or shared by Google) The only thing they haven't come up with a workaround for (other than scribing) is handwritten group activities like "foldover stories" in a creative writing class.

HTH