Why the article is helpful

• Lists available assistive technologies for teachers and students
• Technology allows to change the way we review a page, font-size, margin settings, and more
• Examples: Microsoft Word, Firefox add-ons

The article highlights several assistive technologies designed to support reading comprehension for struggling readers.  These technologies are readily accessible to teachers at no cost and include features such as text-modification, digital text manipulation, auto-summarize, readability view options, and text-to-speech options.

Additional details

• Tools available in Microsoft Office include the Readability Statistics tool (generates a grade level score for content) and the AutoSummarize tool (highlights key points in the reading).
• The web browser Firefox has a “readability” add-on that strips away extraneous page elements for the user. This add-on gives the user the ability to change the way they view the page (newspaper, novel, e-book, etc); the font size (small to extra large); and margin settings.

Links to article

• SSA Wikipage