Academic Success

Student Accessibility Services

Immersive Reader

January 26, 2023

Immersive Reader is a free set of tools developed by Microsoft built into the latest versions of Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams, and Edge (among other applications). If you are one of the many, who finds reading or retaining information when reading difficult, Immersive Reader may be for you!

Let’s unpack each of the tools that are a part of Immersive Reader…

Read Aloud

Is a tool that audibly reads text on a page (it reads it aloud 😊). In the Read Aloud tool you can navigate through the text, skipping to only the most important information, or re-reading (re-playing) key pieces of information, and you can also adjust the voice options, changing the readers’ voice or slowing down/speeding up the reading pace.

Text Preferences

Text preferences allows you to adjust the text, including text size, text spacing, column size and page themes.

  • Adjusting text size to either increase small and difficult to see fonts, or decrease large fonts to better fit on your screen
  • Adjusting text spacing increases the white space between words, which can improve reading comprehension and speed
  • Page themes allows you to choose from a variety of page and text colors, which can reduce the experience or severity of eye strain from computer use

Grammar Tools

Is designed to support reading comprehension by allowing you to split words into syl·la·bles, as well as highlighting parts of speech such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Reading Preferences

Features settings designed to support visual tracking, comprehension and memorization.

  • Line focus allows you to highlight a set number of lines at a time, this can be useful if you experience difficulties with visual tracking, or find that you often lose your place while reading
  • Picture dictionary brings up a basic image of many of the words in your text, which may help with word comprehension, and may also support memorization in more visual learners
  • Translate changes all of the text on the page into another language, supporting individuals to read and understand text not in their main language

Why should I use Immersive Reader?

Immersive Reader allows each individual to customize their reading experience to better match their learning styles, preferences and needs.

…but wait… Immersive Reader, Kurzweil 3000… which is better?

Neither! They’re both awesome! …so why highlight two resources that are the same? While Immersive Reader and Kurzweil 3000 are similar, they are not exactly the same as each resource has features that the other does not. For example, Kurzweil 3000 allows you to highlight and extract important pieces of information, while Immersive Reader has additional reading preferences and grammar tools that Kurzweil 3000 does not. Kurzweil 3000 also goes beyond reading supports with writing and study supports built-in as well. Keep in mind, both are FREE resources, and there is nothing wrong with using both!

Resources:

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