Customizing with UD Features: CAST eReader

Index

Overview

Back to index

1. Multiple Representations of Information

CAST eReader includes built-in support for converting text to speech by means of a high quality speech synthesizer.

d

Users can easily control for reading speed, pitch, modulation and volume by using voice preferences built into eReader.

Back to index

2. Multiple Options for Expression and Control

CAST eReader provides keyboard equivalents for all essential program functions and multiple ways to read, highlight, and navigate through a document.

d

Keyboard commands can control all program functions and dialog box choices in eReader. For example, keyboard commands enable users to step ahead and back within the text while it is spoken. Users can customize modes for reading and highlighting and can choose whether the program reads an entire document automatically or stops at the end of a sentence or a paragraph.

Back to index

3. Multiple Options for Engagement

d

CAST eReader enables users to access text from a variety of sources such as Web pages, word-processing documents, books, and newspapers.

Back to index

Customizing Tips

• For students who have various learning styles and preferences, adjust how much text is highlighted as it is spoken and whether the program automatically continues to read at the end of each block (such as a word, sentence or paragraph). Experimentation by the users and teacher may be necessary to make appropriate selections for individual learners.
  
• For students who have low vision, choose a voice and its properties according to the purpose of the reading task. The flat robotic-like voices are useful for high speed listening but the use of high quality, almost human-like voices, can provide support for those who most need to pay attention to the meaning of the text and not voice qualities.

Back to index

Universal Design Wish List

• Add word meanings and examples to the talking spellchecker's built-in dictionary.
  
• As is true of today's most popular browsers, it is not possible to browse the Web and then easily save Web pages with embedded graphics. Although saving the HTML document and images separately is possible--similar to the way that Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer work--a unified Web document with both text and images cannot easily be saved to disk and then reopened with current versions of the Macintosh and Windows eReader.
  Note: Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 5.0 now allows you to save whole web pages with their graphics.

Back to index

Feedback

How do you customize your students' learning with eReader? We would like to add your ideas to our Web site, space permitting. (If we use your submission, we will give you credit.) Submit your Customizing Tips and UD Wish List items via e-mail to udfeedback@cast.org.

Back to index

Product Information

For more information about CAST eReader, see the Teaching Tools section of this Web site.

Back to index

Disclaimer

Although CAST created this product, we do not consider it to be fully universally designed. Universal design is a process that we too are learning. We include this product to illustrate some of its universally designed features as part of our educational purpose.

Back to index