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Accessibility Support from the Library

Screen readers and assistive software.

If you find reading print on a screen or printed page difficult there are many screen readers available to help you.  Some are freely available on your browser but some may require a subscription to access the full range of tools provided.

Screen readers are software or apps that allow text displayed on a computer screen to be read allowed with a speech synthesizer.

You often have a choice of voices, for example English or American accents and you can alter the reading speed and choose whether the system reads word by word or sentence by sentence.  You can also change the look and feel of the web page or document you are reading, for example by highlighting text or changing the font size.

In this section of the guide we aim to offer you guidance on how various screen readers work. 

There is a useful guide to screen readers on the Abilitynet website from the link below.