The Microsoft Immersive Reader is a free tool, built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams, Forms, Flip, Minecraft: Education Edition, and the Edge browser. The tool implements research-proven techniques to provide equal access to reading and writing for people regardless of their age or ability. The example target populations are emerging readers, learners with special needs, or learners whose first language is not English.
Immersive Reader works with most types of texts, including mathematical equations. The tool will adapt the visual appearance of the texts to match the needs of a specific learner and translate them into over 40 languages. Immersive Reader is increasingly becoming an integral part of many more technology tools and applications.
The Microsoft Immersive Reader is a powerful tool, which provides teachers with a set of accessibility features to share with their students. These features aim at developing and maintaining individual students’ reading and writing ability, and making learning content accessible to everyone in the classroom, through text adjustments, voiceovers, or translations. The tool is built into Microsoft applications, such as Word.
Immersive Reader helps a teacher build an inclusive classroom, where every student regardless of their ability will get the amount of teacher’s attention necessary for successful learning. Teachers can recommend the use of the following features to the students, who work on improving reading speed and comprehension:
Originally designed for students with dyslexia, Immersive Reader now has extensive features. Immersive Reader supports changing text font, spacing between letters, identifying syllables, color coding parts of speech, and narrating the text. The tool supports translation of the text into over 40 languages. The tool has an optical character recognition (OCR) feature that will help a teacher to make all of their printed handouts accessible to all students. OCR allows Immersive Reader to interact with hand written text, and text from images or PDF.
Immersive Reader is a native tool within most Microsoft applications and can be utilized in many third-party applications. School administrators can request Immersive Reader to be integrated into school/district learning management systems (LMSs) for equal accessibility of the tool for all students, their parents, and teachers.
Microsoft Immersive Reader is free and accessible to anyone who uses associated Microsoft applications and many third-party resources, which have Immersive Reader integrated in them. Immersive Reader shares its security and privacy features with the associated Microsoft applications, and other associated third-party resources. When used as a part of a school/district’s learning management system (LMS), the system’s security and privacy settings will apply, including appropriate age limits.