Dyslexia software

TextHelp Read & Write

Products such as TextHelp Read & Write can help with a range of tasks, such as reading, composing and proof-reading.

TextHelp Read & Write is installed on your computer. It displays a toolbar, usually across the top of the screen, though it can be moved by the user. This is what the full toolbar looks like.

And this is a zoomed in view of the icons.

There is also a web extension that provides a separate toolbar that works better with websites.

Icons on the read and write web extension

Each icon does something that could be helpful for a dyslexic person. We'll go through these in sections.

Text to speech

First of all, I need to explain the difference between a screen reader and text to speech. A screen reader includes text to speech but also has many more features that enable blind users to navigate without seeing the content. Text to speech is the term for any software that reads out text. So Read & Write is text to speech but it is not a screen reader.

Here are the text-to-speech tools:

Text to speech buttons for backwards, play, pause, forwards and stop

These do exactly what you would expect. If you select the Play button (triangle), it will start reading the text. You can pause this, go backwards and forwards and stop it. As it reads the text, each paragraph gets highlighted in yellow and the word being read in blue. This makes it easier for the user to follow and read along.

Toolbar above a document, play button is red and a paragraph of the document is highlighted

Understanding and producing text

Read & Write also has a set of tools to help users to understand and produce text.

Set of icons to help with understanding text

Similar word checker

When working in a document or email, the user can get Read & Write to scan their text for words that could be mistaken for other words that sound similar but have a different spelling. For example, the word there has three different spellings, depending on meaning.

Document with words highlighted and a pop-up showing three different spellings of there

Other words that were picked out in this document included:

assistance - could be confused with assistants
are - could be confused with our
more - could be confused with moor

Screen masking

A common difficulty that dyslexic people face, is in keeping their focus on the right line of text. Read & Write provides a screen masking tool to help with this.

Text on a webpage with most greyed out but one line showing brightly

The user can choose the height of the highlighted line and can move it with the mouse to help them keep track of where they are reading. This can make it easier when moving from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.

Other tools

At the end of the toolbar, there are a few more tools. Some of these are explained next.

Final section of toolbar with more advanced tools

Highlight

There are many reasons why users might find it helpful to highlight text in a document or webpage. At a basic level, it can serve as a reminder and help users to go back and find relevant sections.

However, using Read & Write, the user can highlight words and then add them to vocabulary lists, use them to create document outlines and to make notes.

Translate

Dyslexia isn't the only reason that a person might have difficulty reading and understanding text. If English is not your first language, it can also be difficult. Although still not perfect, online automatic translation tools are getting much better and more accurate. Read & Write provides a tool to allow the user to translate into other languages.

Pop-up box with option to choose source and target language