Using Text-to-Speech Assistive Technologies to Support Students

Text-to-speech is an assistive technology that reads the text on a screen out loud and provides both visual and audio supports for students who struggle with reading, writing and spelling. Most text-to-speech programs provide visual highlighting in-sync with the audio reading of the text.
Text-to-speech is a Universal Design for Learning strategy that benefits many diverse learners in a variety of settings.
Text-to-speech programs are available on many commonly used programs and devices and don’t require additional software. Macs, iDevices, Chromebooks, Microsoft Word, Office 365/Immersive Reader, and iBooks /Kindle Readers all have readily available text-to-speech options for students.
In order to use text-to-speech, text must be in a digital format.
This video was produced for the Georgia Department of Education by the Center for Inclusive Design and Innovation (Assistive Technology Partnership 2020).