Microsoft's Immersive Reader is a tool that:
- Sustains attention and improves reading speed.
- Reduces cognitive load by reading story problems or equations out loud.
- Supports non-native speakers.
- Improves reading speed by reducing “visual crowding”.
- And more!
Read more about the Immersive Reader on Microsoft's website.
Watch a quick video:
Immersive Reader is always available during practice. If you wish to use it for your mock or final test, please submit a special accommodation request. We will require evidence from a doctor or another pertinent professional demonstrating appropriate specialist qualifications. All documents must be written in English or translated to English by a sworn translator. You are required to provide both the original and translated documents.
We offer Immersive Reader accessibility technology in theory pages and exercises. To use it, simply click on the icon that you will find in the top right corner of the page.
The text from the exercise or the theory page will open up in a separate space. If you activate a hint, solution, or a theory page, this text will be added as well.
- To open the fullscreen mode, click on the square in the top right corner. Note that the fullscreen mode won't be available to you if you are doing a test in fullscreen mode.
- To play out the text, click on the play button.
- Click on the speaker icon to adjust the voice settings. You can adjust the speed of the voice, or switch between feminine and masculine.
Select a word if you would like to start listening from a different point on the page. This might be helpful if there is a lot of text on the page, but you don't want to listen to the full text.
"Picture dictionary" is enabled by default, so you can click on some words and see the visual illustration of that word.
Click on the three lines in the upper right corner to go to Settings.
In the first tab, you can:
- Adjust your text size;
- Increase spacing between words;
- Change the font (Calibri, Sitka, Comic Sans);
- Choose a theme (different colour options);
- Show source formatting (keep the original formatting-italic, bold words, etc).
In the second tab, you can enable:
- Syllables - this option will show all the words in syllables
- Highlight parts of speech - choose to show nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Choose a colour for each of them, if the default colours aren't suitable. Once you enable at least one of them, you can decide to enable or disable labels. If you disable labels, only the colour of the selected word will be shown, without the label (n. for noun, v. for verb, adj. for adjectives, adv. for adverbs).
In the third tab, you can set up:
- Line focus - Choose how the lines will show while you are listening to the text.
- Picture Dictionary - This feature will show an illustration for individual words in the text.
- Translate - Choose to translate by word or by document.