Windows
- Monthly accessibility learning webinars for Windows 10 and Office 365.
- Screen reader, text-to-speech, magnification, speech-to-text, voice control, visual notification, on screen keyboard, toggle keys, adjustable mouse settings, high contrast schemes etc.
- Tools related to:
- Vision
- Hearing
- Neurodiversity (dyslexia, seizures, autism, or other cognitive differences)
- Learning disabilities
- Mobility
- Mental health
Built-in accessibility on Windows-based devices
Apple
- Text-to-speech, magnification, high contrast, sticky keys, speech-to-text, voice control, word completion, etc.
Built-in accessibility on Apple devices
Android
- Screen reader, magnification, custom size, contrast, and color of the screen, voice access, switch access, captions, live transcribe, sound amplifier, real-time-text during calls, etc.
Built-in accessibility on Android devices
Access to Information and Reading
NaturalReader
Text-to-Speech for at home, work, or on the go.
- Reads aloud any text.
- All basic text to speech functions.
- Can adjust speed and change voice.
- Comes with a floating bar to read any text in other applications.
Balabolka
Text-to-Speech program using the voices installed on your computer
- Supported text formats: AZW, AZW3, CHM, DjVu, DOC, DOCX, EML, EPUB, FB2, FB3, HTML, LIT, MOBI, ODP, ODS, ODT, PDB, PRC, PDF, PPT, PPTX, RTF, TCR, WPD, XLS, XLSX.
- The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV, MP3, MP4, OGG or WMA file.
- Can save the synchronized text in external LRC files or in MP3 tags inside the audio files. When an audio file is played with players on a computer or on modern digital audio players, the text is displayed synchronously (the same way, as lyrics for songs)
Immersive Reader
Immersive Reader, included in OneNote Learning Tools, is a full screen reading experience to increase readability of content in OneNote documents. Learning Tools is designed to support students with dyslexia and dysgraphia in the classroom, but can support anyone who wants to make reading on their device easier.
- Change text size, crowding between letters, font, and background color.
- Highlight parts of speech.
- Change voice settings.
- Shortcut keys for to navigate and listen to a text.
Immersive Reader at Microsoft learning tools website
TTSREADER
Text-to-speech online
- Naturally sounding voices.
- No download or log in required. Simply copy and paste the text or upload text or pdf file.
- Multiple voices and speech rates.
- Highlight the sentence as it is spoken.
- Export speech to audio file.
WordTalk
Text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word.
- Speaks entire document, paragraph or word.
- Highlights the text as it goes.
- Adjust the word highlight colors.
- Change the voice and the speed.
- Convert text to audio file (wav or mp3)
WordTalk website and WordTalk support website
Read Aloud
Text-to-speech technology that reads web pages.
- Click a button and have the article read aloud to you.
- Exports text only into a new overlay window and highlights the currently read text.
- Magnify the exported text.
- Choose from many available male and female voices.
- Set the pitch of the voice and the reading speed.
- Supports PDF.
Read Aloud at Chrome Web Store
Readsy
Helps you skim large amounts of text by focusing your eyes on one word at a time without having to move them (Spritz technique).
- Upload a PDF or text file, copy and paste text or URL into the website to have it streamed in Readsy.
- Adjust your reading speed (wpm).
- Highlight of one letter of each word in red helps focus your eyes in ORP (optimal reading position) for easier and faster processing of the information.
NVDA
Screen reader.
- NVDA allows blind and vision impaired people to access and interact with the Windows operating system and many third party applications.
- Built-in speech synthesizer supporting over 50 languages, plus support for many other 3rd party voices.
- Reporting of textual formatting where available such as font name and size, style and spelling errors.
- Automatic announcement of text under the mouse and optional audible indication of the mouse position.
- Support for many refreshable braille displays, including input of braille via braille displays that have a braille keyboard.
- Ability to run entirely from a USB flash drive or other portable media without the need for installation.
- Announcing controls and text while interacting with gestures on touch screens.
Be My Eyes
Connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers and company representatives for visual assistance through a live video call.
Common ways people are using Be My Eyes:
- Finding lost or dropped items.
- Describing pictures, paintings or other pieces of artwork.
- Matching or explaining colors.
- Reading labels on household products.
- Reading on computer screens if websites are inaccessible or screen readers are not available.
- Shopping in supermarkets.
- Identifying the expiration date on perishable food packages.
- Familiarizing yourself with new places.
- Distinguishing between food items.
- Finding out when public transportation (buses trains, etc.) are departing or arriving.
Be My Eyes website and How to get started with Be My Eyes
Rewordify
Simplifies difficult English.
- Replaces higher-level vocabulary with words that are easier to understand.
- The reworded words are highlighted – click them to hear and learn the original harder word.
- Pick the hard words you want to learn – Learning Sessions actively teach you words so you learn them.
- Choose your own learning style out of four offered.
- Keep track of your learning with lots of detailed charts that show how you're doing.
- Access free classic literature library.
Bookshare
Online library of accessible reading materials for people with reading barriers.
- Customize your reading experience with eBooks in audio, audio + highlighted text, braille, large font, and other formats.
- Access the largest library of textbooks, bestsellers, children's books, career resources, and more for people with reading barriers.
- Read on almost any device, including smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, computers, and assistive technology devices.
Dolphin EasyReader
Reading app for readers with dyslexia, low vision or blindness.
- Direct access to browse and download from Bookshare and other accessible book libraries.
- Subscribe and read newspapers with NFB-NEWSLINE.
- Read with your ears and eyes with perfectly synchronized text and audio.
- Play audio books or add a human sounding voice to text only titles.
- Choose colors, text size and highlights to suit your visual needs.
- Intuitive search and navigation or add audio bookmarks.
- Copy text from anywhere on your phone and hear EasyReader announce it.
- Fully compatible with iOS VoiceOver and iOS supported Braille displays.
- Supports Bookshare's Reading Lists.
Mercury Reader
Removes ads and distractions, leaving only text and images for a clean and consistent reading view on every site.
- Disable surrounding webpage noise and clutter with one click.
- Send to Kindle functionality.
- Adjust typeface and text size, and toggle between light or dark themes.
- Quick keyboard shortcut (Cmd + Esc for Mac users, Alt + ` for Windows users) to switch to Reader on any article page.
- Printing optimization.
- Sharing through Facebook, Twitter and Email.
Mercury Reader at Chrome Web Store
ModMath
Helps kids with dyslexia and dysgraphia do math.
- Provide students with a virtual piece of graph paper, where they can set up math problems in a format that’s easily legible.
- Provides students with a pencil-free platform for doing basic arithmetic, including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
- Allows older students to complete more complex math assignments, including fractions, square roots and algebraic equations.
- Print out the work pages to turn in at school, upload to Drop Box, or send worksheets via e-mail, or text.
- Move completed equations to various points on the page.
- Save assignments in a searchable document library.
Microsoft Office Lens
Makes pictures of whiteboards and documents readable. Converts images to editable Word and PowerPoint files too. Office Lens is like having a scanner with optical recognition feature in your pocket.
- Scan and share classroom handouts and notes into OneNote and OneDrive.
- Scan the teacher's handouts and annotate them in Word and OneNote.
- Take a picture of the whiteboard or blackboard to reference later, even if you're offline.
- Take a picture of handwritten notes and make their content searchable.
- Keep class notes and your own research organized. OneNote’s search allows you to find everything for the test quickly.
Microsoft Office Lens for Android device
Microsoft Office Lens for Apple devices
How to use Office Lens in OneNote
CamScanner
Scans and converts images of printed text into editable text accessible for reading apps.
- Use your camera phone to scan documents, notes, and whiteboards.
- Use the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature to convert images to readable text.
- Sync documents across devices, share and collaborate
Text Fairy
OCR Text Scanner.
- Convert an image to text.
- Correct the viewpoint of an image.
- Edit extracted text.
- Copy extracted text into the clipboard for use in other apps.
- Convert the scanned page into PDF.
- Recognizes printed text from more than 50 languages.
Text Fairy at Google Play Store
Simple OCR
Converts paper documents into editable electronic text for use in any application including Word.
- 99% accurate optical character recognition.
- Convenient post-recognition text editor with proof reading and correction.
- A dictionary of more than 120,000 words (it is unlikely that Simple OCR will run into a word it does not know + a tool to add new words to the dictionary).
- Despeckle or "noisy document" option which increases recognition accuracy.
- Recognizes underline, italic, and bold.
- Captures and retains pictures from the original paper document.
- Plain text extraction.
- Batch OCR feature to recognize multiple documents
- Zone OCR feature to recognize appointed areas in a document.
Ava
Live subtitles for any conversation.
- On-the-fly closed captioning for what is being said around the user 24/7.
- Use the app in meetings or conversations to see what people are saying.
- Large font and user friendly font on the screen for easy reading.
- Caption one-on-one conversations, group conversations for 2 or more people, or lectures for up to 5 hours per month with free version.
- Get live-subtitles on your phone for any video, podcast, radio show that you're following on your computer.
Information Input and Writing
Grammarly
Detects grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, and style mistakes in your writing.
- Flags potential issues in the text and suggests context-specific corrections for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
- Corrects mistakes in your text with a single click.
- Learn from your mistakes to avoid them in the future.
- Offers lots of great content to help you improve your writing skills.
Google Handwriting Input
Translates your scribbles into a typed text directly onscreen as you write.
- Supports printed and cursive writing, with or without a stylus.
- Supports more than a thousand emojis, so you can express yourself in any Android app.
- Useful for languages that can be challenging to type on a standard keyboard.
- Understands the sloppiest scrawl quite well and offers predictive text at the top of the window to let you tweak its interpretation.
- If you claim your handwriting is terrible, try it out and see if it can convince you otherwise.
- While there is no specific iOS version, you can enable Google Handwrite in mobile Safari or Chrome to search with finger or stylus
Google Handwriting Input at Google Play Store
Pen to Print
Handwriting OCR (optical character recognition).
- Extracts handwritten texts from scanned paper documents and turns it into digital editable text.
- Allows to edit misrecognized text line by line.
- Premium plans allows user to save recognized text to files, copy it, email it, share via messaging apps available on your device, use your text in any word processor like Microsoft Word, Google Docs or similar.
Pen to Print for Apple devices
Pen to Print for Android devices
Simplenote
The simplest way to keep notes.
- Automatically updated notes across all your devices.
- Instant searching and simple tags.
- Share a list, post instructions, or publish your notes online.
- Auto save with ability to go back in time.
- Write, preview, and publish your notes in Markdown format.
- Backups, syncing, sharing.
Microsoft OneNote
- Take all your notes in OneNote by typing, writing with a touchscreen, importing pictures, video, web links and other resources.
- Ability to record your lecture with this program.
- Divide up your classes and work by notebook, section, and pages.
- Using OneDrive online, share your OneNote document for others to work on and interact with.
- Search your notes for the ability to easily find what you need.
Google Keep
Offers a variety of tools for taking and accessing notes, including text, lists, images, and audio.
- Recognizes text from images and makes it editable using optical character recognition technology.
- Transcribes audio notes into an editable text.
- Sets reminders with options to be activated by time or location.
- Converts text notes into checklists.
- Allows for a single-column view or a multi-column view and color-coded notes.
- Copies all text into a new Google Docs document by pressing "Copy to Google Doc" button.
- Creates notes and lists by voice.
- Allows for collaboration on notes with other Keep users in real-time.
- Syncs notes across devices.
Dictation on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
You can use dictation instead of your keyboard to enter text with many apps and features that use the iOS keyboard.
How to use dictation on your Apple device
Voice Typing in Google Chrome
Type and edit by speaking in Google Docs or in Google Slides speaker notes.
- Go into your Tools menu in the Google Chrome Browser and select Voice Typing.
- Click on the microphone that pops up and start talking.
- Your text will be entered into the typing field.
- Correct mistakes without moving your cursor.
- No training needed.
How to type with your voice in Chrome browser
Speech Logger
Multilingual speech-to-text application aimed at assisting with transcription of any type of documents, books, reports, blog posts, etc. by using voice.
- 95% accuracy for US English.
- Custom dictionary allows adding short commands for inserting frequently used data (punctuation marks, phone numbers, addresses, etc.).
- Exceptionally valuable for people who have difficulty using their hands due to trauma, people with dyslexia or disabilities that limit the use of conventional input devices.
- Supported by Chrome browser (for desktop only) and Android OS.
Speechnotes
Speech to Text Online Notepad. Speech Recognition Text Editor.
- Works entirely online in your Chrome browser. No download, no install and even no registration needed, so you can start working right away.
- AutoSaves notes as you speak.
- Listen to your transcribed notes, edit, and export your notes to word, email, download, upload to Google Drive, or print.
Speech Texter
Multilingual speech-to-text application aimed at assisting with transcription of any type of documents, books, reports, blog posts, etc. by using voice.
- 95% accuracy for US English.
- Custom dictionary allows adding short commands for inserting frequently used data (punctuation marks, phone numbers, addresses, etc.).
- Exceptionally valuable for people who have difficulty using their hands due to trauma, people with dyslexia or disabilities that limit the use of conventional input devices.
- Supported by Chrome browser (for desktop only) and Android OS.
Mind Mapping & Brainstorming
MindMeister
Capture, develop and share ideas visually.
- Create and edit graphical mind maps.
- Sync maps and folders with your free online account.
- Share maps directly from the device.
- Multi-touch support for drag and drop, zoom, pan.
- Add icons, colors, styles, boundaries and map themes.
- Edit and view notes, links and tasks on ideas.
- Draw connections between topics.
- Export as RTF, PDF and image.
- Browse Public Maps.