Module Description - Instructional Outcomes - Instructional Events
Instructional Evaluation - Discussion List

Section 9: Reading Documents

To start reading, click the Read button in the Main Toolbar or press F3.

Notice that the Read button becomes the Pause button, and that you can toggle the reading on and off.
(Kurzweil reads, “Alice was beginning to get very tired” “of sitting by her sister on the bank.”)

Use the controls on the Reading Toolbar to set your reading options.

Your choices for reading mode are:
• Continuous
• Self-Paced, and
• Word-by-Word.

The reading units, or how much text you want Kurzweil to read at a time, are:
• Word
• Phrase
• Line
• Sentence
• Paragraph
• Headings, or
• Highlights.

If you choose Continuous, Kurzweil will continue reading until you Pause it. If you choose
Self-Paced, Kurzweil will read by the reading unit, and you will have to hit the space bar or Read to resume reading.

Let’s try reading by Phrase.
(Kurzweil reads, “Alice was beginning” “to get very tired” “of sitting” “by her sister”)

You can set the Reading Speed using the arrow keys.

And, you can adjust the Zoom value.

You can navigate quickly to the first or the last page of a document or use the arrow keys to go up or down one page at a time. You can also just type a different page number in this box.

To change the reading voice, choose Tools -> Options and click the Reading tab. Here you can select the speaking voice, test it, and set the speed.

If you have the language learning component installed, you can also test the foreign language voices.

You can also Auto-Scroll your images.

You can select a reading language other than English.

You can choose to have the Kurzweil voice go silent when you minimize the page, pause at bookmarks and empty notes, read footnotes when they are opened, and highlight the spoken word.

To adjust the reading text color, size and highlighting options, choose the Text tab. Here you have a choice of colors for text, background, word, and unit.

You can restore the default colors at any time, invert the colors, or use masking for blocks or words.

You can also change the fonts and the font sizes here.

To see a word magnified in its own window, choose View -> Magnify Spoken Word.
(Kurzweil reads, “Alice was beginning” “to get very tired”.)

Options for displaying the magnified word are set under Tools -> Options -> Magnifier tab.

If you don’t like the way a word is pronounced, determine whether the error is a one-time OCR error by checking the underlying text, or whether it is a true pronunciation error that you want to fix permanently.

(Kurzweil reads incorrectly pronounced, “Curiouser and curiouser!”)

That’s not bad, but I think we can make it a little better.

Choose Tools -> Pronunciations.

(Kurzweil reads, “Curiouser will be pronounced curiouser.” )

I think if we can just get rid of this “o” here. Let’s try that.
(Kurzweil reads correctly, “Curiouser will be pronounced curiouser.”)

That’s a little bit better. So we can click OK here.

(Kurzweil reads correctly, “Curiouser and curiouser!”)

This concludes Section 9.