Article Intended For
Penn State faculty, staff, and students.
Introduction
You may already be a regular user of the Immersive Reader in Office 365 documents and Canvas pages. Immersive Reader provides a variety of tools and options, such as a read-aloud function and adjustable text, to enhance your reading experience and improve comprehension. Depending on your preferred web browser, there are built-in features and downloadable extensions you can use for similar assistance when reading web content outside of the Canvas and Office 365 environments.
NOTE: In addition to general webpages, these workarounds are also helpful in Canvas if you ever run into problems with the default Immersive Reader function.
Article Body
Immersive Reader
Edge
Because Immersive Reader is a Microsoft product, it is integrated into their browser.
Read about Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge to learn how to start and stop reading mode and set your user preferences.
NOTE: For World Campus Canvas content, you may need to select the Print Lesson option before starting the Immersive Reader. Try this if neither the built-in Immersive Reader nor the browser-based Immersive Reader are working for you.
Chrome
Immersive Reader is not officially available in Chrome, but there is an unofficial browser extension that can enable it.
- Install the Use Immersive Reader in Websites extension.
- Click and drag to highlight the text you want to read and right- or control-click.
- Click Help me read this.
Figure 1: Click Help me read this.
Firefox
While the Immersive Reader is not yet available in Firefox, Mozilla has a very similar feature called Reader View.
Safari
Safari has a comparable feature called Reader.
- On the page you want to read, click the Reader button at the left end of the search field.
NOTE: The Reader button appears only if the webpage has an article that Reader can display.
Figure 2: The Reader button in the Safari browser.
- Click the letter button at the right of the search field to adjust your preferences (font size, font, background).
Figure 3: The letter button in the Safari browser.
Other Read-Aloud Options
Chrome
The Read-Aloud Browser extension in Chrome can read web content without the need to highlight and right- or control-click the text.
Safari
The Safari browser has a built-in text-to-speech feature.
- On the page you want to read, open the Safari Edit menu.
- Select Speech followed by Start Speaking.
Figure 4: Select Speech, then Start Speaking from the Safari Edit menu.
- Customize speech settings by going to System Preferences > Accessibility > Speech.
NOTE: If Canvas content is not displaying in Safari, open Safari preferences and under Privacy uncheck Prevent cross-site tracking.