Skip to main content
All CollectionsPerfection NextInteractive Editions
Accessibility Features with Immersive Reader
Accessibility Features with Immersive Reader

Empower students to tailor their learning experience using Immersive Reader in Perfection Next.

Updated over a month ago

Immersive Reader

Overview

Microsoft's Immersive Reader technology has been integrated into the Perfection Next®

learning platform. The immersive reader features are available for eBooks and Interactive Editions. The capabilities of Immersive Reader implement proven techniques to improve reading and writing for people regardless of their age or ability.

Improving Comprehension

Immersive Reader can help improve comprehension by...

  • Supporting fluency for English language learners or readers of other languages

  • Helping to build confidence for emerging readers as they learn to read at higher levels

  • Offering text decoding solutions for students with dyslexia and other learning needs

  • Providing individual word or whole text translations into over 120 languages with many of them to be read aloud

  • Providing scaffolding to ensure students with a variety of learning needs have access to grade-levels texts

Building a Foundation for Future Success

Inclusive education tools give more students personalized access to their curriculum, optimize teacher time, and improve learning outcomes.

  • Students grow their potential and gain independence.

  • Teachers are more empowered to engage every learner.

  • Schools build reputations as positive places that promote equity and inclusion.

Feature

Proven Benefit

Enhanced diction

Improves text authoring

Focus mode

Sustains attention and improves reading speed

Immersive reading

Improves comprehension and sustains attention

Font spacing and short lines

Improves reading speed by reducing "visual crowding"

Parts of speech

Supports instruction and improves writing quality

Syllabification

Improves word recognition

Read Aloud

Reduces cognitive load by reading materials

Real-time translation

Supports non-native (ELL in the United States) in accessing content knowledge

Launching Immersive Reader

Selecting the Immersive Reader icon in the upper left corner of the Content Area.

This will launch the Microsoft Immersive Reader in Perfection Next®.

Read Aloud

Immersive Reader allows one to play an audio version of the materials. Not only is this available in English, but if the document has been converted to another language then it can also be read in that language as well. Note that not all languages support read aloud but the vast majority due.

One can select the Play button to enable text-to-speech in Immersive Reader. To the right of the play button are Voice Setting that enable the user to change the voice and speed of reading the text.

Text Preferences

Text preferences in Immersive Reader allow users to customize the appearance of text to improve readability and remove visual distractions. Text preferences can be found in the Immersive Reader toolbar.

Here are some of the text preferences available in Immersive Reader:

  • Text Size: Adjust the size of the text by moving the slider left or right

  • Increase Spacing: Increase the spacing between lines of text

  • Font: Change the font

  • Themes: Choose from a variety of page themes and color options

  • Show Source Formatting: Show or hide source formatting

Grammar Options

The grammar options in Microsoft's Immersive Reader help readers understand complex sentences and improve reading comprehension:

  • Syllables: Break words into syllables by showing dots between them

  • Parts of Speech: Highlight nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs in different colors

  • Show labels: Display abbreviated parts of speech in the corresponding color

  • Customize highlight colors: Choose from a range of colors to align with school policies or your needs

Reading Preferences

Reading preferences in Microsoft Immersive Reader allow users to change the way they interact with text:

  • Line Focus: Highlights one, three, or five lines at a time to help readers focus.

  • Picture Dictionary: Displays an image or illustration related to a word when clicked. Users can also hear the word pronounced.

  • Translate: Changes the language of the text to a user's preferred language. Users can translate a single word or the entire document.

Full Screen Mode

Users can enter full screen mode to strip away the Navigation and Information Bars in Perfection Next to allow one to focus on the content and maximize screen real estate.

Return to Lesson

The back arrow allows one to exit the Immersive Reader view and return to the lesson within Perfection Next®.

Supported Languages

Language

Translation

Read Aloud

Afrikaans

Albanian

Amharic

Arabic (Egyptian)

Arabic (Saudi Arabia)

Armenian

Assamese

Azerbaijani

Bangla

Bashkir

Bosnian

Bulgarian

Burmese

Cantonese (Traditional)

Catalan

Chinese (Literary)

Chinese Simplified (China)

Chinese Simplified (Singapore)

Chinese Traditional (China)

Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong)

Chinese Traditional (Macao SAR)

Chinese Traditional (Taiwan)

Croatian

Czech

Danish

Dari

Divehi

Dutch

English (Australia)

English (Canada)

English (Hong Kong SAR)

English (Ireland)

English (United Kingdom)

English (Unite States)

Estonian

Faroese

Fijian

Filipino

Finnish

French (Canada)

French (France)

French (Switzerland)

Georgian

German (Austria)

German (Germany)

German (Switzerland)

Greek

Gujarati

Haitian Creole

Hebrew

Hindi

Hmong Daw

Hungarian

Icelandic

Indonesian

Inuinnaqtun

Inuktitut

Inuktitut (Latin)

Irish

Italian

Japanese

Kannada

Kazakh

Khmer

Kiswahili

Korean

Kurdish (Central)

Kurdish (Northern)

Kyrgyz

Lao

Latvian

Lithuanian

Macedonian

Malagasy

Malay

Malayalam

Maltese

Maori

Marathi

Mongolian (Cyrillic)

Mongolian (Traditional)

Nepali

Norwegian

Odia

Pashto

Persian

Polish

Portugese (Brazil)

Portuguese (Portugal)

Punjabi

Queretaro Otomi

Romanian

Russian

Samoan

Serbian (Cyrillic)

Serbian (Latin)

Slovak

Slovenian

Somali

Spanish (Latin America)

Spanish (Mexico)

Spanish (Spain)

Swedish

Tahitian

Tamil

Tatar

Telugu

Thai

Tibetan

Tigrinya

Tongan

Turkish

Turkmen

Ukrainian

Upper Sorbian

Urdu

Uyghur

Uzbek (Latin)

Vietnamese

Welsh

Yucatec Maya

Zulu

Research

Research behind Immersive Reader from Microsoft for inclusive classrooms.

Font Spacing

10% faster and 50% fewer reading errors when reading text with optimized layout

— Marco Zorzi, et al, Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia

Findings point to subtype of dyslexia involving elevated crowding and demonstrate that individuals benefit from interventions personalized to their specific impairments.

Line Length

27% increase in reading speed when using short line lengths

Breaking Words into Syllables

10% increase in reading comprehension for adults with syllabification

— Yu-Chi Tai, et. al., Within-Word Text Segmentation on Lexical Processing and Reading

Building the syllabic bridge from available phonological syllables and frequent letter clusters may therefore be the first step in learning to read.

Page Color

The children who chose a colored overlay read more slowly without the overlay than with it. These children reported more symptoms of visual discomfort and showed signs of tiring when they read without the overlay.

Text-to-Speech (Read Aloud) and Word or Line Highlighting

It was concluded that students with learning disabilities in all grades, except the 7th grade… benefitted from the read aloud accommodation more than their typical peers, presenting a differential boost.

Simultaneous highlighting and voicing text – “Dual highlighting is a related software feature, sometimes called masking, in which the context (sentence or paragraph) is highlighted in one color while the spoken word is highlighted in a second color, making it easier for readers to stay in sync with the spoken text….They found that students with LD who were given text passages with bimodal input performed as well on the comprehension questions as the average reader control group with visual input alone.

"Elkind examined the effectiveness of using speech synthesis during reading tasks on reading performance for post-secondary students with dyslexia. Their results showed participants not only demonstrated improved reading rates and comprehension, but also increased their ability to sustain attention while reading.”

The use of screen readers or other text-to-speech software has led to increased reading comprehension performance for students with the weakest reading skills.

For students with reading disabilities, text-to-speech technologies may assist students with reading comprehension – a meta-analysis.

Sitka Font

During the typeface's development, we tested how well people could read each of the letters in the typeface, and used the test results to inform design decisions.

Did this answer your question?