

Font: Choose whichever font is easier for you to read (options include Calibri, Sitka, or Comic Sans).Increase Spacing: Toggle the switch to increase both the spacing between letters and the spacing between lines of text.Text Size: Move the slider to change the text size.In this panel of the menu, you can make changes to the way text appears on your screen. On the upper right corner, you will see icons for Text Preferences, Grammar Options, and Reading Preferences. When you open Immersive Reader your screen will transform to fill the screen.
#HOW TO USE IMMERSIVE READER IN POWERPOINT HOW TO#
Learn how to access Immersive Reader in Teams, Word, Edge, PowerPoint, and Forms. Learn how to access Immersive Reader in Outlook Microsoft continues to expand its list of platforms on which Immersive Reader is offered and updating their Immersive Reader site with the most current information. Without altering the original text, Immersive Reader allows you to change how the text appears to you so you can read it more comfortably. Immersive Reader provides a variety of tools to support reading and comprehension. I expect it’s going to be a popular extension with Chromebook classrooms, and who knows, maybe Microsoft will create an official version themselves.Immersive Reader is an inbuilt feature now available among a variety of Microsoft platforms. Mike Thoflsen, the Product Manager on the Microsoft EDU team, later confirmed that the extension was created by the CEO of Pear Deck, who used a publicly available API from Microsoft to create the tool. This week I saw Joe Marquez tweet that he found an unofficial Chrome extension for the Immersive Reader on the Chrome Web Store.

However, you will also find it integrated into an increasing array of edtech tools that you may already be familiar with. It’s also built-in to the Edge browser, and can be found on the iPad version of many of these apps. You will find it in Microsoft’s Office apps like OneNote, Word, Outlook and Microsoft Teams. Today, the Immersive Reader can be found in all kinds of useful places. There is a picture dictionary that can be accessed by double clicking on a word, and the line focus tool will help students keep track of their reading without skipping lines by mistake. You can also highlight parts of speech, or translate text into another language and have that read aloud.

Words are highlighted as they are spoken, and further options exist to adjust line spacing or font size.ĭig a little deeper and you will find the option to separate words into syllables, choose a different font, or change the background color to increase or decrease contrast. Words can be read in a male or female voice, and the speed at which the text is read can be adjusted to match the needs of the reader. One of the key features of the Immersive Reader is to read text aloud. However, as is increasingly the way with accessibility tools today, it soon got adopted by teachers working with all kinds of students: such was it’s appeal and flexibility. The Immersive Reader was initially created to help support students with dyslexia. It launched in January 2016 under the guise of Learning Tools for OneNote, but today you may know it better as the Immersive Reader. Many of these pet projects never saw the light of day again, but the winning entry quickly grew to become an indispensable tool for a huge number of students and their teachers. In August 2015, Microsoft held an internal hackathon where employees competed with other Microsoft staff from around the world to solve a problem with technology.
