Mike Matvy, 5–29-25
Here are artificial intelligence (AI) tools that let students do reading by listening at 250–350+ words per minute with excellent comprehension, do writing by speaking as fast as they can speak, and use AI tools that instantly do searches and all those other things that those of us with dyslexia used to struggle to do.
Notes:
(1) Two crucial playback features are required for a reading-by-listening tool. These features are built into most modern playback apps, but it’s essential to ensure that the app you choose has these features. They will let you read efficiently and make the best use of what you read. Basic efficiency features are — (A) increase (and decrease) the playback speed, e.g., 0.5x, 1.0x, 1.25x, 1.5x,… 3x, or 80 words per minute to 650 words per minute — (B) tap to skip forward and back by a time interval, e.g., 1 or 2 seconds to 10 seconds. In addition to the standard playback features, some special apps have features designed especially for reading by listening, making reading more efficient and usable. These features include bookmarking, highlighting words, sentences, or passages for searching later, adding notes in the text, searching the text for words, phrases, and sentences, using an onboard dictionary and thesaurus, and reading options including navigation by sentence, paragraph, page, or chapter, to name a few. (Caution!-There are options to highlight and underline text as it’s being read, which can be helpful for going back and finding a word or sentence, but using this feature will prevent good comprehension if the student attempts to follow along visually in the text while reading by listening.)
(2) It’s best to start with the tools built into your devices, so you will only have to learn to use three or four tools for almost all your reading and writing needs, and those tools are free, as are the special library services. Therefore, this list will emphasize those universal access tools. However, after you become skilled at a basic set of tools, you may want advanced features that require special apps.
This list will consist primarily of Apple products because they have been the universal access leader and checked out by me. However, other devices are adding some of these accessibility tools, and some of those will be listed below.
These AT tools enable students with dyslexia to complete reading and writing assignments in the same length of time as their peers and stay caught up minute by minute in the classroom.
(1) Screen readers on computers, tablets, and smartphones — to quickly read anywhere on a screen
(A) VoiceOver built into all Mac computers and all iOS devices (iPad, iPod, & iPhone)
— iOS devices, https://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision/
— Mac http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/
(B) TalkBack built into Android devices
https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/6007100?hl=e
(C) VoiceView built into Amazon Fire Tablet
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201829330
(2) Speak Selection — that lets the user select a word, paragraph, or sentence and have it voiced
— iOS devices, https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/spoken-content-iph96b214f0/ios
— Mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/have-your-mac-speak-text-thats-on-the-screen-mh27448/mac
—Android https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/7349565?hl=en
(3) Accessibility Shortcut built into iOS devices — to let you triple-click to quickly turn VoiceOver off and on anywhere, anytime
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3598
(4) Voice recognition systems that work simultaneously with a screen reader — to get “dictation with typing echo” which is typing and immediately hearing what was just typed
See dictation with typing echo in action on Mac:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOyGnxFvpmI
VoiceOver can speak what you’re typing (known as a “typing echo”):
https://support.apple.com/guide/voiceover/hear-what-you-type-mchlp2708/mac
(5) Special apps — to read Bookshare books, PDF files, etc., on computers, tablets, and smartphones.
I recommend Voice Dream Reader, and it can be purchased on iOS and Android devices. (The new “BookShare Reader app” is a free app designed specifically for BookShare books. When I tried it out, it still had some bugs in it, but it’s worth a look because it’s free.)
— iOS https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voice-dream-reader/id496177674?mt=8
— Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=voicedream.reader&hl=en_US
— Computer, tablets, & phone https://www.bookshare.org/cms/get-started/bookshare-reader
(6) Audiobooks from Learning Ally, Bookshare, and National Library Service
(free for students) — played with these apps, BARD Mobile, Learning Ally, Voice Dream, etc.
https://nlsbard.loc.gov/NLS/ApplicationInstructions.html
(7) The Learning Ally app, Bard Mobile app, or Voice Dream Reader app
— to play the specially formatted audio and text content with speed and flexibility.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/learning-ally-audio/id418888450?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bard-mobile/id705229586?mt=8
utm_source=sosign-3SUP8C-10&utm_medium=sosign&utm_campaign=14038201104&utm_term=victor%20reader
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voice-dream-reader/id496177674?mt=8
(8) Voice Dictation built into all our devices
— to complete writing quickly, with correctly spelled words.
— iPhone, iPad, and Android https://www.howtogeek.com/177387/use-voice-dictation-to-save-time-on-android-iphone-and-ipad/
— Mac https://www.howtogeek.com/178636/use-voice-dictation-to-speak-to-your-mac/
— Amazon Fire https://www.amazon.com/Xenom-Apps-Speech-To-Text/dp/B005N1I0HG
(9) Audio recording systems
— Record class lectures using a phone with an app like the iOS Voice Recorder app, which can skip forward and back by 15 seconds, increase the playback speed (up to 2x), skip silent spaces, and enhance the playback. Using these features built into most audio playback apps, one can review a 55-minute lecture in 5 to 10 minutes, skimming and scanning, running at high speed, and skipping silent patches. Lectures can also be played like a podcast while walking or driving, re-reading, or studying later.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/play-it-back-iphebbd067ce/ios
(10) Related software
— for additional support for reading, writing, and research use dictionaries, spellcheck programs, web search programs, etc. These software systems are often built into your devices for free. Large language model (LLM) AI systems can be used as assistance for getting instant answers to questions ranging from how to spell a word, getting to needed facts,”completing complex tasks, like generating research ideas, searching the Internet, or summarizing and re-organizing your rough draft article to suggest a synthesized well-written version. See (13.1) AI Assistants below.
(11) Grammar Checkers
— Grammarly automatically detects potential grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, tone, and style mistakes in writing and suggests corrections. It’s helpful but not perfect.
— Grammarly Free web version https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grammarly-for-safari/id1462114288?ls=1&mt=12
— Grammarly Premium subscription https://www.grammarly.com/premium
—Flawlessly AI, Free AI Grammar Checker, https://flawlessly.ai
(12) Text scanning OCR
— a hand-held reading device that takes a picture and converts printed material into spoken language (iOS Device w/Seeing AI, Voice Dream Scanner, Prizmo Go app (Free), or Prizmo 5.)
—Seeing AI (free) (Speaks text as soon as it appears in front of the phone’s camera)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/seeing-ai/id999062298?mt=8
— Voice Dream Scanner (~$9.99) (scans print with OCR and text to speech, lots of functionality) (Students can save, edit, & export the text)
https://www.voicedream.com/scanner/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymG9H1UyJA
https://ndassistive.org/blog/6-scan-and-read-app-of-my-dreams/
(13) OCR tools “on the fly”
— to copy print from images to make readable text while avoiding the errors and drudgery of copying
— TextSniper (~$11.99), (Select, click, and extract text from images from your Mac window to digital text on your clipboard)
— Live Text (Free) for images that have text, use Live Text OCR built into iPhone iOS 15+. (Scan photos on your phone, Use your camera, tap the button, see the text, select the text, read the text with speak selection or VoiceOver, and paste the text anywhere.)
— Notes app’s camera on iPhone/iPad (free) https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/scan-text-and-documents-iph653f28965/ios
(13.1) AI Assistants
— Use a large language model (LLM) (AI) system like Open AI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, or Grok to do all those tasks that you can’t do well because of difficulty with sounding out and spelling words. Explain to the virtual assistant what you’re doing and ask it to do tasks for you – find data, find quotes in a book or from the Internet, search to get answers to your questions, and give you a report. It’s a tool that can make mistakes; always check for accuracy. Free versions work quite well.
https://tech.co/news/google-gemini-tutorial-how-to
https://grok.com/?ref=aiartweekly
(When interacting with an LLM, you can: Research anything, speak to it like it’s a person, describe a word you’re trying to remember and have it give you possible words, summarize anything into a few main points, ask for another way of saying something, give it a huge task and get results rapidly, etc.)
(14) Read-aloud testing app on the iPad/iPod/iPhone
(For full disclosure: this is an app that I, Mike Matvy, developed, own, and sell on the Apple iTunes store)
(15) Ongoing evaluation and program planning
— which takes into account [A] the students’ abilities, needs, and aptitudes, [B] their school and home environment, [C] tasks they are expected to complete, and [D] assistive technology (AT) systems used to accommodate for reading spelling and writing inadequacies. An excellent set of procedures is available for planning assistive technology interventions and ongoing support — The SETT Framework by Joy Zabala
(16) Student training
— which includes initial training on each system and follow-up/follow-through training to ensure that adequate support is provided for both mastery of the assistive technology system and successful integration of the assistive technology system into the student’s curriculum and life.
