This month’s blog compares the following three literacy support software packages.
Texthelp Read&Write GOLD, ClaroRead Plus and Kurzweil 3000 for Windows are popular literacy support software programs. You may want to compare the features and identify which literacy support software programs may best meet your students’ needs in the classroom or at home.
Most of these software have features to support reading and writing. Their main features include: read MS Word documents, PDFs , and Web pages with highlighting. This type of software can read anything on the PC screen by selecting with a mouse. They can also save text as speech to an audio file and scan paper documents (OCR) and spellcheck. These types of software can reads multiple languages (i.e. English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish with the user’s preference of voices and accents). Word prediction support is also available for the student to help with spelling and writing, and phonetic prediction (i.e. knowledge). Another feature is echo and listen back after you have written. Mobile device support is common. Some advanced features include dictation, picture recognitions, and Dragon professional document support (i.e. echo back text recognized by Dragon professional Software). You may find the following literacy support software comparison chart helpful to compare each features. The chart was created by Spectronics. Go to the following URL or click the chart below:
http://www.spectronics.com.au/article/literacy-support-software-comparison-chart
Please note that most software companies add more features time to time which may not be listed in this chart.
Additional information:
Texthelp Read&Write GOLD: https://www.texthelp.com/en-us/products/read-write/premium-features/
ClaroRead Plus: http://www.choiceadaptive.com/product/claroread-plus/
Kurzweil 3000: https://www.kurzweiledu.com/k3000-firefly/features.html