Windows Low Vision: Magnifier Reader

In a previous workshop in this series, we learned that Windows has a built-in magnifier. I've got more good news. I'm Vikki Vaughan, and today we'll take a look at the Magnifier reader, Windows read aloud tool.

For those of us with low vision, the Magnifier is our go-to for viewing our computer screen. There are times, however, when we need some extra help. Magnifier now includes a built-in feature that lets us read everything aloud on our computer, from a long email to a busy website.

Let's start off by turning on Windows Magnifier. Now I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, so we'll use our shortcut of Windows key and the + sign to turn on Magnifier. When we're ready to turn off Magnifier, we press the Windows key and Esc. Let's give it a try. With the Magnifier on, we see an enlarged view of our screen. In our task bar, we click on Magnifier to find a small overlay in the shape of a rectangle.

This is Magnifier's floating toolbar. By selecting the tool bar and dragging it with our mouse, We can place it anywhere on our screen. Across the bottom of the toolbar, we find several tools. The first set of tools lets us adjust the level of magnification to our needs.

Our next set of tools controls our read aloud functions. We have the previous, play/pause, and next buttons. Next, we find the read from here button. Finally, we see the settings tool. Let's select it with our mouse pointer.

We've opened a new window which contains several additional controls. The first is a slider bar that allows us to control the rate of speech when reading aloud. We can move this slider with either our mouse pointer or our left and right arrow keys. Moving to the left slows down our speech, while moving into the right speeds it up. Since I'm a big shortcut fan, I'm going to speed up my speech a tad by pressing my right arrow.

Let's tab to our next control, the reading voice. We can open this dropdown menu by either pressing our Enter key or selecting it with our mouse. Let's press Enter. We see three different voice choices, Microsoft David, Zira, and Mark. Once you start reading, have fun trying out these different voices.

Okay, I think we're ready to open an email and start reading. As with most Windows operations, there are several ways we can accomplish a task. For those of us who prefer to use our mouse, we can use the controls in our toolbar to start and pause reading. Let's select the play/pause button to read this first sentence.

Reader: Since Hadley launched its digital learning platform almost one year ago, more than 11,000 learners have signed up to learn with Hadley Online, and enrollment continues to grow at a strong and steady pace.

Vikki: We select the same button to pause the read aloud. We can also use keyboard shortcuts to listen to our email. I bet it's no surprise that this is my favorite method. We hold down Ctrl and Alt and press the Enter key to start playing from our current position. We can move back to the previous sentence with Ctrl plus Alt plus the letter H for hopping.

To help us remember, think of hopping back to that previous sentence. When we want to skip to the next sentence, we use Ctrl plus Alt plus the letter K, we might think of skipping forward to the next sentence. Let's check out these shortcuts. I'll place by text cursor at the beginning of this sentence and press Ctrl + Alt + Enter.

Reader: Since Hadley launched its digital learning platform almost one year ago, more than 11,000 learners have signed up to learn with Hadley, and online and enrollment continues to grow at a strong and steady pace.

Vikki: We see a blue box around each word as it's read aloud. We use the same shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Enter to pause reading aloud. Now let's press Ctrl + Alt + K to skip to the next sentence.

Reader: Through Hadley, people who are blind and visually impaired are finding the help they need across a wide range of topics and building the skills and confidence to accomplish new things.

Vikki: Next, let's press Ctrl + Alt + H to hop back to the previous sentence.

Reader: Since Hadley launched its digital learning platform almost one year ago, more than 11,000 learners have signed up to learn with-

Vikki: We have yet another keyboard shortcut for reading aloud. We hold down our Ctrl and Alt keys and left click with our mouse at the point where we wish to start. This is the read from here function that we heard about in our tool bar.

Reader: Hadley online, and enrollment continues to grow at a strong and steady pace. Through Hadley-

Vikki: I clicked my left mouse button to pause reading. As you can see, our Magnifier tool bar is still available to us. We can use a combination of toolbar buttons, mouse clicks, and keyboard shortcuts to move through a document and read it aloud.

I encourage you to give it a try in your documents, emails, and web pages to see which method works best for you. In today's workshop, we learned all about Windows Magnifier reading tool. I'm Vikki Vaughan, and I thank you for joining.