Read&Write is a literacy support tool that helps individuals of all abilities read, write, and express themselves with confidence. For education and the workplace, its assistive features include text-to-speech, word prediction, and research tools for users with diverse learning needs.
We use the screenshot reader often in our classes. Things like drama scripts, music sheets or other pdf's can be read online through the screenshot reader.
We are still learning how to use Equatio. I am not a mathematician and therefore I am finding understanding it a bit more difficult. Once I understand how to use it I will be able to cascade it down. My hope is that it will be as useful as Read & Write.
Cowriter, Snap and Read, Clicker, Kurzweil None of those popped up. I know of the merger but I would say some of the big things that made me choose CoWriter or Snap and Read over Read&Write for students still haven’t moved over and I’m hoping that will happen with time. Things …
Read&Write measure up well against these but can be a little more expansive. It does have a bank of tools in the one place though which is a positive as it means that users do not need multiple programmes
Read&Write has many more toolbar options, but I know that CoWriter and S&R have been incorporated into Read&Write. Nice to have one extension instead of 2 separate ones.
Special Education Coordinator/Resource Room teacher
Chose Read&Write
Read&Write has many more features, such as highlighting, speech to text, picture dictionary, screen contrast, and masking. Read&Write is much more accessible for all students and staff as well, since it is attached to their individual accounts.
Read&Write has a lot more inclusive features then Grammarly especially in terms of the picture dictionary and reading rulers and screen masking and the text to speech.
Early on our district was using Kurweil 3000 but that was restrictive to the computer that it was placed on. We also used co-writer (Don Johnson) for writing supports. By having both features available in one convenient toolbar along with other amazing features that follow the …
We still utilize Microsoft Immersive Reader as our Tier2 / UDL support tool. However, the word prediction is barely functional and there are confusing limitations to when certain tools are available (the picture dictionary is available in Word Online but not in Edge).
Prior to getting Read&Write at college we used the free apps Orato and ColorVeil. Orato had about 5% of the features Read&Write has, it would often crash and only read text you could highlight. Orato just had screen masking. To be fair, this freeware was never intended to be …
It works very well at home. For exams and homework the text to speech function is really useful. In lessons is good too. The text to speech is more complicated to use because the candidates/ students need a different room. We also need more training on how to use this function.
Setting the speech to text up on different devices that do not have the internet speed to function smoothly or if it is in Exam mode and the user is not constantly using the speech to text mode.
Grouping the voices on their style such as harsh, clipped or soft would enable to pick their preference quicker rather than going through all of the different countries.
I'm just really impressed with the software and the access it gives to learners who are used to coming up against barriers in education. It's a quick-fix for a learner - something they can access usefully and productively with very little training. I also love that learners can access Read&Write on their devices at home - that really is a game changer.
I am giving this an 9. Not a perfect score because working on PDFs is better but not yet as easy as I need for it to be. Working with many students who have executive function challenges, I need a smooth simplistic access method. We are not quite there yet for writing on PDFs. Overall the toolbar on Read&Write is super easy to access and I love that the suite includes several tools on the toolbar providing a solution to many accessibility challenges.
The support team at Texthelp is excellent. They're all super helpful and open to feedback and new ideas. Still, more importantly, they are ultimately fully committed to aligning with us and ensuring they help us provide the best education possible. Furthermore, they're open to new features and always communicate this incredibly well.
It took a solid 2 weeks for R&W to work on our students chromebooks even after reaching out to tech support. The toolbar was greyed out and not accessible to students. Took a long time before tech support helped us solve this problem.
We still utilize Microsoft Immersive Reader as our Tier2 / UDL support tool. However, the word prediction is barely functional and there are confusing limitations to when certain tools are available (the picture dictionary is available in Word Online but not in Edge). We still utilize the Windows-based speech-to-text (windows+h) because it is available natively in Windows even in desktop applications other than a web browser. It is good for people to know one tool that works everywhere. However, Read&Write offers the most complete set of ELA support features all in one place, without burdening the user with extra software or a confusing interface.
