Category Archives: Revision

PDF reader in Microsoft Edge and Immersive Reader goes mobile.

Posted on by

We don’t usually have a collection of stategies but in this case Alistair McNaught has posted an interesting comment on Linkedin that he now uses Edge to read PDFs. From the quote below the browser offers better reading experiences not just with the usual table of contents, page view and text to speech.

Microsoft Edge comes with a built-in PDF reader that lets you open your local pdf files, online pdf files, or pdf files embedded in web pages. You can annotate these files with ink and highlighting. This PDF reader gives users a single application to meet web page and PDF document needs. The Microsoft Edge PDF reader is a secure and reliable application that works across the Windows and macOS desktop platforms. More Microsoft Edge features

Microsoft have also updated their Immersive Reader so that it now works on iOS and Android. The following text has been taken from a post that might be useful ‘What’s New in Microsoft Teams for Education | July 2021’

  • “Immersive Reader on iOS and Android. Immersive Reader, which uses proven customization techniques to support reading across ages and abilities, is now available for Teams iOS and Android apps. You can now hear posts and chat messages read aloud using Immersive Reader on the Teams mobile apps.
  • Access files offline on Android. The Teams mobile app on Android now allows you to access files even when you are offline or in bad network conditions. Simply select the files you need access to, and Teams will keep a downloaded version to use in your mobile app. You can find all your files that are available offline in the files section of the app. (This is already available on iOS.)
  • Teams on Android tablets. Now you can access Teams from a dedicated app from Android tablets.
  • Inline message translation in channels for iOS and Android. Inline message translation in channels lets you translate channel posts and replies into your preferred language. To translate a message, press and hold the channel post or reply and then select “Translate”. The post or reply will be translated to your UI language by default. If you want to change the translation language, go to Settings > General > Translation.”

Thank you Alistair for this update on some new strategies.

Visolve for checking colours and

Posted on by

Visolve showing colours of a logoThe Visolve webpage or download allows you to check to see if colours are sufficiently distinguishable from each other.  This can help those with  colour vision deficiency or colour blindness.  You can upload an image and it will provide you with the original view and other selected options such as Red-Green transform, Blue-Yellow transform, Saturation increase, Red, Yellow, Green or Blue filter and with added hatching.

Visolve is also available as an app for iPhones or on Windows and Mac.desktop computers.

This strategy is linked to Alexander studying for a distance learning MBA

Seeing AI for recognising things and reading out what it has found!

Posted on by

According to Stuart Ball this free Seeing AI iPhone or iPad app has multiple benefits for those with visual impairments or who are blind.   It has been developed by Microsoft so has the ‘swiss army knife approach’ according to AccessWorld to telling you about the world around you.  It searches out light sources, identifies colours and money and describes them using text to speech.  It will recognise a person is approaching and offer a description.  Barcodes can be read and optical character recognition is used for documents etc.  Clear handwriting can be deciphered and scenes described.

Another college student called Veronica in USA has provided a very helpful Seeing AI review from a blind student’s point of view

Microsoft have produced a YouTube video about the Seeing AI app.

Thank you so much Stuart for providing this strategy.

Stuart Ball is an Assessor at the Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Claro ScanPen for image to text scanning with text to speech

Posted on by
Reply

Claro Scanpen used with an exam paperI have found that Claro ScanPen works well with typed text and has the advantage of real time scanned conversions without an internet connection.  You can take a photo of the text using your smartphone camera and the app will scan the content and read it aloud using optical character recognition (OCR). Having had the text read out you can copy and paste sections into another app such as Notes.

Claro Software have created the a video showing you how to use Claro ScanPen with Guided Access

It works both on an iOS or Android phones and tablets and is available from the Apple app store and Google Play. The Android version is free and updates have fixed some of the glitches, the iOS version costs £6.99 outright at the time of writing.  This version has a restricted number of voices for different languages, whereas the premium version with an annual payment of £9.99 provides unlimited access to many different languages and option to have 10 free scans before paying as well as a 14 day trial.

Dr Abi James – Research Fellow, University of Southampton.

Microsoft OneNote web clipper for capturing data

Posted on by
Reply

I really like OneNote as I can dump all my research into different sections and pages, grabbing things from the web. I can share them with colleagues which has been made easier now that OneNote can be used both off and online and there is a Chrome extension called web clipper.  You need to have a Microsoft account and download the extension. The icon sits at the top of the browser and when there is something you want to keep for reading later you can choose to have the complete page or sections etc.  OneNote has always been good at automatically capturing where the clip comes from with a URL  but this method allows you to add to the information.

onenote web clipper

 

Free ssOverlay to tint the screen

Posted on by
Reply

I use coloured glasses when working with computers but our network has ssOverlay. which I can use if I forget them!   You can select the colour you want from settings arrow and activate the overlay.  It covers the screen completely and can be turned off and on from the bottom right of the taskbar. where a small yellow arrow can be seen.  Right hand mouse and you can exit the program. It is very simple and easy to use.

ssoverlay screenshot
ssOverlay (921Kb download )
“Very similar to Dark Screen, ssOverlay (the ss stands for Scotopic Sensitivity), places a coloured overlay onto the screen. The colour and transparency levels can be adjusted to suit the user.”

Gloucester College student working on StemReader for Maths that has now been superseded by equation reading in Microsoft Word and TextHelp EquatIO