Text-to-Speech / Speech-to-Text
Kurzweil 300
Kurzweil is Wellesley’s text to speech technology. This means that when you upload a piece of text, Kurzweil can read it out loud to you. Just like Siri, you can customize your Kurzweil voice and its reading speed. While it’s reading, Kurzweil will highlight the word, sentence, or paragraph it’s on. If you’re someone who has a hard time focusing on readings, the combination of auditory and visual input can help.
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Kurzweil also has annotation capabilities and templates you can use to take notes. You can highlight text, and leave two types of notes on the text. When you’re done annotating, you can extract your annotations to a separate document, so they’re all in one place. Kurzweil is also a helpful tool if your readings come in pdf format since it allows you to highlight pdfs as well.
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Kurzweil also has speech-to-text capabilities, which means it can fill in your notes without you having to type them.
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Kurzweil is an official Wellesley College software, meaning you can find it directly on the ADR website under "Assistive Technology" in the General Information tab. This is a free software program for anyone with a wellesley.edu email. Once you register your email, you'll receive a username. Once you self-register your account, you can access all of the tools Kurzweil offers, and even download a browser extension to work for websites.
Speechnotes
Speechnotes is a free alternative to Kurzweil 3000. This is a great option in case there are issues self-registering for Kurzweil while waiting for ADR to get back to you regarding a potential fix. Speechnotes is a website that creates notes with speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities. There is a helpful list of commands you can say to insert punctuation and other functions. From the website, you can email your notes, save them, and even save them to your Google Drive or to your device as a Word document or .txt file. There is also a dark mode.
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To get the software, go to the Speechnotes website, where you can start writing almost instantly. It is also available as an app on iOS and android.
Document Accessibility
SensusAccess
SensusAccess is Wellesley’s document converter. This means that when you upload a document, it can automatically convert it into a range of alternate media. You can also convert inaccessible documents, such as image-based PDFs, PowerPoints, and jpegs.
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We have a Wellesley College SensusAccess page, where you can directly upload a file or enter in a URL or text. For more information, visit the LTS website.
Speechnotes
Speechnotes is a free alternative to Kurzweil 3000. This is a great option in case there are issues self-registering for Kurzweil while waiting for ADR to get back to you regarding a potential fix. Speechnotes is a website that creates notes with speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities. There is a helpful list of commands you can say to insert punctuation and other functions. From the website, you can email your notes, save them, and even save them to your Google Drive or to your device as a Word document or .txt file. There is also a dark mode.
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To get the software, go to the Speechnotes website, where you can start writing almost instantly. It is also available as an app on iOS and android.