Various student groups face challenges when reading text-content or documents in Brightspace.

• Students with dyslexia (11% students at WUR) regularly feel overwhelmed with text-heavy content, leading to cognitive overload and disengagement.  
• Students with mild visual issues (ex: dry eye) and those with temporary visual impairment (ex: post-surgery) may find it difficult to read for extended periods, often experiencing fatigue and discomfort.  
• Neurodiverse students (ex: students with ADHD 12% or Autism 6%) often face challenges with dense or not-well-structured text-based content. This often leads to distraction or being overwhelmed.

ReadSpeaker can: 

• Help students with dyslexia, mild, and temporary visual impairments through text-to-speech capabilities with control over reading pace and accent.  
• Help neurodiverse students through focus capabilities with text highlighting, font size & type control, and by controlling which paragraphs to show/hide.  
• Benefit all students to listen to their learning materials in the train or gym.  
• Can support non-native students with translation and dictionary options.

ReadSpeaker can be accessed in two different ways:

1. Open a PDF, Word document or PowerPoint in the course

2. Scroll down below the document and click Open with docReader

3. The document will open in a new ReadSpeaker docReader window with the following options:

1. Show/hide sidebar
2. Previous
3. Next
4. Page number
5. Listen
6. Pause
7. Stop
8. Skip backward (5 sec)
9. Skip forward (5 sec)
10. Layout mode
11. Text mode

13. Help
14. Language: You can change the language and voice of the reader.