Read and Write Gold Demo

All right Lindsey, so thanks for coming today, and welcome to Read and Write Gold. Is this something that you've ever heard of before? No I haven't. So Read and Write Gold is a software people can get that can help with reading and writing needs. If someone has a visual impairment, has dyslexia, maybe English is their second language, or a combination of things, or they're just a very auditory learner, this is a helpful software to utilize Here is the Read and Write toolbar You can access this by clicking on the "R&W" icon on the main computer toolbar This is kind of a collapsed version of this, it doesn't show all the icons you might need You can access everything else by clicking "more" and it shows you all the different options that there are Some of which we'll be going through today So the purpose of this is to give you a brief idea of what Read and Write Gold is, to go through the features of it, and have you try out a few features. If there are any questions you have, this will give you an informed choice of if you find it to be useful, or if you know someone who would benefit from this A great way to get a little bit more experience with this is through a program called PA Tech Owl It's actually located at Temple inside their student center It's a program that receives funding that lets Pennsylvania residents receive short-term loans of different assistive technologies. So that's a further resource I can direct you to, if you have an interest in it. But this is more of a brief introduction to see if you might be interested in taking that next step So, let's say we're in a Microsoft Word document For example, your boss decided to email you a document, and you would like it read to you I'll show you how you can do that, and you can also try it out yourself to see how it works for you, OK? So we're going to go through this document here If I want something read to me, I'm going to be clicking the play button and then in a few minutes, we can show you different options for going back, and for going forward things like that This is a sample text to show how Read and Write Gold works . In addition to reading text on your Internet browser, it can read text on Microsoft Word. Alright, so you saw that, do you have any questions for me before we move forward? How would I go back if I missed something and I wanted to hear it again? Yeah, that's a great question You click on this dropdown arrow here - actually, I apologize, it's actually already up This is the back arrow to rewind, and this is the fast foward arrow. So let's try rewinding on this Here is a test document for us to see how Read and Write Gold works So you saw me press the stop sign to stop it So let's say that - sometimes you need to click a few times out of it in order to have all the options available again So I pressed the unpause button, you can also go forward too You want to go forward here Let's try this again. Sometimes it takes a little bit of trial and error Especially if you have an older computer, or a computer with a lot of memory taken up I've been finding some glitches as one of the cons of this device In addition to reading text on your Internet browser, it can read text on Microsoft Word. There's the rewind button, there's the play, and there's the pause Do you have any other questions for me about this? Not yet...oh, what if I wanted to change the color of the highlighting, if I didn't want yellow? Sure, so what you do for that is you go down to the dropdown arrow here This is where you can play with some of the settings if you find that yellow's hard for you to see, if it gives you a headache, or if there's some reason it's not working for you you also have the option of blue, green, or purple so that's the basic idea of how it can be used in Microsoft Word for reading documents Now I also wanted to show it how you can use it if you're on an Internet browser if you want an article read aloud to you here we have an article on Philadelphia and we will have it read to you now, with Google Chrome, there is supposed to be an extension that allows it to play for you automatically however, with my computer, having an outdated version of Google Chrome, that hasn't been working for me so I just wanted to preface it for you with this, that there's more functionality available. but the way that I've been getting it to read in Google Chrome - sometimes you just have to be a little flexible if you have an older computer is by doing this feature here. So as you can see there's these little dotted lines with an arrow So what you do is you select the text you want read aloud to you and you highlight it and then you click alright, so as you can see it's taking a little while to initialize here in a minute, a red box should pop up oh wait, I see it Philadelphia, known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous U.S. city It looks like it cropped a little bit of of what you had from the menu? Yeah, so that is one con I have been noticing. I did that on purpose actually to show that to you, if you leave the Read and Write Toolbar hovering over the text you want read it either cuts out the text that you have, or it might read some of the prompts on the bar Read the web, pop-up dictionary That's just one thing to be mindful of, at least with older computers like this one make sure the bar is out of the way so that doesn't happen As you can also see, we were able to pause the text By pressing this button down here So I'll show you how to resume again Philadelphia, known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous Now, if I wanted to pause instead of completely stopping or restarting, would I go back up to that menu again? So what we'll do is we'll push the pause here Now for my computer, this typically doesn't work, because it doesn't have the Google Chrome feature enabled, but for some people with other computers it can So as you can see here, you might be curious about some of those features So I can certainly show you the pop-up dictionary which is really helpful so take a word here that you want to look up how about metropolitan? So what we can do is you press the dictionary icon which is third from the left on Read and Write toolbar, you can either copy and paste or you can type it in and, there's no definition So this is another con that you're seeing here that it doesn't have the most wide dictionary in terms of the words I guess I would just have to hit the web dictionary if I wanted more details? Yes so you want to try that? it looks like that's opening in an app? so it tends to open this in Internet Explorer oh there we go You would have to ex out of this here, or move it out of the way in order to view your definition here's the web dictionary, hooked up to the Internet dictionary if you ever have questions So let's say you, or someone you're with, has a difficult time reading and doesn't really want a whole verbal dictionary even if you could still have it read that to you that entry to you if you wanted to, but if someone really had a difficult time understanding language written or oral, and they want a picture dictionary that's an option too so the picture dictionary is going to be found right next to the regular dictionary so here, how about you enter the word Philadelphia and see what pops up so this isn't perfect, it's hard to differentiate this from say New York City New York City, we'll try that and it shows you the same thing but it helps me know it's a city it gives you the gist of what you're looking for try another word again and let me know what comes up this one's a bit more helpful, it gives you the American flag an outline of the country, and an outline of the continents of North and South America so that is a useful feature for people who are primarily visual learners alright, so now that I was able to demonstrate to you how to read text on the Internet would you like to show me what you learned? And I can help you if needed Yeah, I'll try I think I use this tool Think of like wrangling it in, like a lasso I see that the menu came down oh, I see that the menu came down. that's one difficult thing, to remember that to drag that screen out of the way there we go Philadelphia is situated on the Fall Line that separates the Atlantic coastal plain from the Piedmont.[66] The rapids on the Schuylkill River at East Falls were inundated by the completion of the dam at the Fairmount Water Works.[67] Interesting that it reads the footnote numbers Yeah, on one hand that's good. So if you have limited visual abilities, you know that there's footnotes but on the other hand, it can kind of impede the fluency of the listening experience you know having those footnotes interrupting and you could also tell here, it's syntax was a little bit awkward and it wasn't quite as fluid as if it were a human being reading so now I'm going to show you an additional feature which can be helpful for reading on the web Alright, this is just going to take a moment here so screenmasking, this can be helpful for people with dyslexia, people who have a hard time following lines, or people who get migraines or just for a variety of needs so this allows you to follow the lines that you're either typing or you're reading so you can follow along with the voice this allows you to change the page color which can be useful so click on tint the whole screen and let's see what happens Do I have to press this? Nope, so we already have this selected. Just double click, it can take a little while to load I see now, it will take a minute here sometimes you have to click a few extra times, I've been finding with this particular computer and it doesn't seem to be working. As you can see, that feature is a little bit unreliable. unfortunately, but that is available to you if you ever find the need for it another option that there is a voice note, so let's give that a shot if someone wanted to leave a voice note, they would enable this little tool bar here if it lets me scroll to the side Can I try it? Yeah, give it a shot Yeah, there you go. So as you can see it's a little slow processing with my computer something else I've been finding is it's helpful to have as few programs running as possible it can be hard, if you're trying to do a research paper and juggle between Word, Internet, and say PowerPoint or Adobe but keep as few programs open, and as few tabs open on the Internet as possible because it can be really slow sometimes so let's try inserting a voicenote right now and see how it works so as you can see, this did not translate accurately what I said at all "She got her eye in Ghana, no right amount, Seattle works so you can see A" So that was nothing like what I said So it's really important to talk very slowly, enunciate loudly, be as close to the computer as possible not be like talking to the side, chewing, or anything like that Can I try? Yeah, let's give this another shot and see if we can get something a little bit more accurate I would like to make a voice note Well, it's closer, it's closer Yeah, so something to be vigilant about, there's some words that look a like, or sound a like. Or it might just drop out the last sound of a word so if you wanted to read it back to you, that's if someone has a hard time reading that's the best way to make sure it's actually what you intended "I'd like to make a voice no There you can see, it said no instead of note that's the best way to ensure the accuracy of this Another important thing, just to keep in mind is to remember to turn this off as soon as you're done because if you start talking and go, "oh darn it!" it will just record it so that's how you do a voice note if you ever don't need this feature, and it's just getting to be distracting you can ex out here, or you can minimize here as we wind down here, there is one more feature I want to show you as mentioned, there are so many different features for this and I do want to make you understand that if you do want to commit to this program it can take hours to learn this I just tell you that so you understand, if you don't get it all right away that's completely understandable, it can take a few sessions with someone it can take a few sessions with someone who's an expert on assistive technology to fully learn it even beyond that point, it can take some follow up too you may have to email or call somebody if additional questions come up that you didn't have before this program is definitely a learning process, it's not something you can really learn in one chuk it does take a little bit of practice and hands-on learning so if you do decide to get this loan from Temple's Tech OWL program or from another assistive technology borrowing program I just want to make sure you come in with that expectation So I can show you one more setting, which I think is pretty interesting one feature of this which is nice we're not going to go too deep into this one here but just to show that one of its strengths is accessibility to people who are non-native English speakers you can translate from English to a number of other languages so that's just something I kind of wanted to highlight if you know people who that would be a good fit for so we're going to try the prediction feature here so the cool thing about this, this is available under settings is that there's a word bank available and this has a number of different word banks so let's say you're doing a paper on ancient Babylon for a history class you're taking there's a lot of atypical words you'd find in a report on Ancient Babylon some spellcheckers, basic spellcheckers, may not recognize but you can pre-set this, so it's familar with all the ancient Mesopotamia, all the names of the various gods. so that's very handy. It has a number of ancient civilizations let's scroll down a little bit more, and say you're doing something on something a little more scientific on hurricanes this way it can not only recognize words you might be inputting about hurricanes but it can also spellcheck them for you so you are able to utilize this program through a blending of voice and typing too if someone types, and they're unsure they're spelling things correctly on a research paper on hurricanes, they can select that as a word bank they're interested in so that's definitely another strength of this program is that it's not just designed for a generalist audience although it works great for a number of people but if you're somebody that's in an academic program or an occupation that centers on something very niche like Marie Curie or Mahatma Gandhi it really knows a lot of words pertaining to those things So that kind of wraps things up for now, that's a really brief look at this program as you can see, it has a lot of strengths, it has a lot of different features new features are frequently being added to it and it's nice that it's accessible on that little toolbar, in the event you ever need it in the event that somebody doesn't need it anymore or that it's interfering with one of the things that they're doing you can simply click sign out and that gets you out of the program I know we talked about some of the weaknesses of the program it's difficult to use on older computers or on a computer that has full memory it also is a little bit of a learning curve so that's to be expected it's not a reflection on the learner, if it takes a little time to get a hang of it it just means this program has so many interesting features, it does take a little while to get accustomed to and we can also just briefly talk about some of the environmental factors for this program, while it can be helpful for someone with low vision the way it's set up with the icons can be very challenging if you have no or limited use of vision so someone with low vision would need to work more closely with a trainer on Read and Write Gold that's one of the things, it's difficult to get the icons to speak to you that's definitely a drawback of the program I think another drawback is it does require a lot of tactile skills like being able to navigate your mouse it's not quite as hands-free as a program like, say, Dragon Naturally Speaking which is an alternate program that's more focused on speech to text so people with those needs may require a little bit more intensive hands-on training overall, what were your thoughts on it? I can see the benefit of it, especially if you can get it to record your voice correctly being able to type with your voice instead of having to physically type papers and being able to read back, especially the web, large paragraphs of text Alright, so I think for follow up, here's something information if you're interested in the Temple Tech OWL program, their lending program is completely free, if someone wants to buy it they can discuss financial options health insurance, government funding, or assistance from private foundations Great, thanks so much. Thanks for coming.