1161. Accessibility - Naturalreader text-to-speech and Microsoft Magnifier

 I have been helping an 86-year-old, visual impaired individual to take advantage of Accessibility features available to him. He had been visually impaired to the degree that he needs to both get a large display with highest resolution and then increase the size to 225% just to visualize the screen Icons and format. He was still unable to read most text.

First came Microsoft's Magnifier implementation that enabled him to magnifier his screen or just a lens over his screen to be able to read short text streams. He chose the Lens mode of the magnifier (Ctrl-Alt-L) since he could already visualize where things appeared on the overall screen. This allowed him to not only read within the lens but also input text without errors. Since his hands were constantly shaky, typing is almost impossible without duplicating letters or misspelling words. We tried the narrator function of Magnifier for a while, but it is very limited and not very consistent in what/where it reads.

Thus, we tried NaturalReader by NaturalReaders.com. Beautiful. You want to use either Chrome or Edge browser and get the Extension from their store to use NaturalReader withing the browser (ANY Website text) in addition to being able to load a file from your desktop or other folder to have that one red to you. You will question what is free or not, but simply put Natural Reader IS Free and unlimited if you chose the FREE voices given. The reader works in either Online mode (FREE or a subscription to get additional voices of function), or download a software version which also gives you access to Online but still limits your time in minutes and characters if you aren't using a FREE voice.

Here's the rub. It defaults to a voice that is part of the PLUS subscription. Thus, it will stop narrating at 5 minutes. Boo. To get around this, hit the Change button when the voice & play popup comes up and scroll to bottom of voices. All voices are designated by the subscription mode and FREE is specified for 3 voices at bottom. Now you will have unlimited access to whatever you want narrated. We are evaluating the functions in the FREE mode and have found everything we need.

What other functions did we pass up for now? One must remember that it is reading TEXT for its narration. Text withing an image is NOT TEXT by nature. If you want to read it you need to convert it to OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Thus, if you scan a document, e.g., you geta letter, bill, etc. in the mail and want help reading, you could scan it in and have it go through OCR software to "attempt" to convert all text correctly. OCR software is NOT perfect first off, but doe give you enough to correctly read a document despite some errors. Most likely, but haven't tried yet, NaturalReader knows this and can read and narrate correctly regardless. To use OCR with NaturalReader, you will need the Premium Subscription. (even if you have the NatyralReader software, plus, of course you will need OCR software. Brother printers/scanner come with the function and allow scan-to-OCR directly. Beware that not all OCR software is equivalent and you should find the best out there.

One other function we didn't play with yet and which I don't think is a necessity is the convert text to MP3 file. Maybe that would be beneficial should we want to hear the file some other time or to replay it in the future and didn't want to have to redo the text to speech work again.

Bottom line is NaturalReader is great. Unlike the Magnifier from Microsoft which uses its Narrator, it reads continuously without a hiccup, meaning wondering how to continue where you left off. The Free voices are the same to us! David in Plus is David FREE. I couldn't tell the difference. 

Now you can both see and read (narration. Increasing mouse pointer is helpful, but instead of increasing the size too much which will overlay text, CHANGE the COLOR. I found that my client had no problem finding it when green. He just then needed it enlarged minimally to see where the point was. I also use the magnifier now for the fine print text. AN I use the NaturalReader to narrate a Kindle eBook while work on something else. These changes to my client's life were invigorating. He again feels empowered and doesn't have to just sit around. Since he is so ambitious, he pursued genealogy using FamilySearch.org and succeeded in building his tree back to the 1600s where he uploaded over 500 pictures and attached them to individual persons. He also has written a story of his ancestors and self-published that. To transfer that onto his descendants, we put the story and photos out on Goole Drive (G:/MyDrive) which he could simply send to ANY email recipient to view. I have learned a lot in this progress and feel great that I could help. Sam, through me, has now become a seeing-eye and speaking dog, and would be proud of me.😀💕😁