Use Microsoft Immersive Reader to reach more people
The written word can be viewed by many different readers: children, young people, adults, the elderly, the visually impaired, dyslexics and readers with a mother tongue other than that in which the text is written, to name a few.
The words are written to convey something. Some words are to be learned from, some to be entertained by and other words, such as a label on a button in a computer program, is important for understanding how to use the program.
Imagine that you get an important message that says “jsfh alkf afsjk” and you must choose between two options, either “kjh” or “jklj”. When text does not make sense, one becomes frustrated. There may be many reasons why a text is difficult to read, but fortunately there are some good tools that can help.
Immersive Reader is one such tool. Immersive Reader can, among other things, play the written text as sound and for some that would make the text that originally was difficult to read understandable.
Immersive Reader can also translate the original text into another language. What was read as “jsfh alkf afsjk”, with translation becomes “Will you attend the parent meeting?”.Immersive Reader can translate into over 60 different languages, and you get original text and translated text easily accessible so that you can compare, see, and listen to the words, and thus learn. This can also be used for language learning.
Design for better or worse
The person who writes a text, or the person who creates a computer program can make a number of steps to make the content more accessible. But that is not always enough. What some see as design or nice illustrations, will for someone with reading challenges be noise that makes the text difficult to read. Immersive Reader removes illustrations and other things that may be perceived as disturbing to the reader. With Immersive Reader, you can also adjust line spacing, word spacing and give the text an easy-to-read font.
For example, the Comic Sans font is more often easier to read for new readers as the letters are written the way they learn to write the letters.
“Comic Sans has letters that are similar to those students learn to write, and can therefore be easier to read for the youngest students”.
Want to see more of what Immersive Reader can do? Microsoft has created an interactive guide that shows you the various options Immersive Reader Interactive Guide.
Immersive Reader in Skooler
You probably already have access to engaging reader in several of the programs you use daily.
- In Word you will find Immersive Reader in the View tab on your Word document
- In OneNote Immersive Reader is a part learning tools for OneNote and for OneNote for Windows 10 select View > Immersive Reader from the menu bar.
- In Teams you will find Immersive Reader in messages and posts by selecting the three dots that appears when holding the cursor over the text.
In Skooler, we have added an Immersive Reader to the tools themselves, so that students and parents can read the text from an assignment description, an assessment, and other places where something has been written, such as the messaging tool.
Such a good tool that is easily accessible deserves to be used. Maybe you got some ideas on how to use Immersive Reader while reading this blog?
