Read&Write
For a printable version of this page, please see the Read&Write Gold How-To Document.
Open Read&Write
Double-click on the purple puzzle piece icon on the desktop to open the Read&Write toolbar.
If you would like, you can click and drag the toolbar to the top edge of the screen to anchor the toolbar to that edge. This often makes it easier to access while having other programs open.
To unanchor the toolbar from the edge of the screen, click the anchor icon on the far right of the toolbar.
Reading Word Documents
Reading Word documents with Read&Write is simple! Just open the document and press the play button on the Read&Write toolbar. Alternatively, you can select text within the document and press play.
Reading PDF Documents
PDFs must be opened through the Read&Write toolbar in order to be read. To do this, click the PDF Aloud icon on the toolbar. This will prompt you to navigate to the PDF document on the computer and open it.
Once it is open, text can be read by pressing the Play button or selecting text and pressing Play.
Note that this will not work for image-based PDF documents. In addition, some documents may not read in the order in which they are supposed to.
The Screenshot Reader is a good way to work-around these issues.
Screenshot Reader
To use the Screenshot Reader, click on the appropriate icon in the Read&Write toolbar. The cursor will change from an arrow to a plus sign and the majority of the screen will dim slightly. Now, you can click and drag a red box around image-based text. Read&Write will analyze the selected area and recognize any text that appears. The software will automatically read the recognized text.
After the text is read, the red box will remain active. In the bottom right corner of the box, there will be a play button that you can use to re-play the analyzed text. In the top right corner of the box, there will be an X that can be used to close the box.
Reading The Web
First, be sure that you are using the Windows Explorer browser.
Next, turn on Read the web. To do this, click on the arrow just to the right of the Play button on the toolbar to open a menu. Then click "Read the web" (shown in the image to the right). Once this is enabled, hover over text on a website in Windows Explorer to have the text read aloud.
Scanning a Document
Click on the arrow just to the right of the Scan button on the toolbar to open a menu. Ensure that the Scan to PDF and Scan from TWAIN options are selected, as shown in the image to the right.
Select "Scanning Options..." from this menu.
In the Scanning Options window that appears, ensure that the correct scanner is selected and that the Multipage Settings has "Multiple pages (using ADF)" and that the "Enable duplex" box is checked as shown in the image to the right. Click "OK".
Click the scan button on the Read&Write toolbar and follow the prompts in the pop-up windows to scan the document. Once scanning is complete, you will be prompted to save the document.
Once the document is saved, it can be opened with the PDF Aloud feature on the toolbar and read as described above under Reading PDF Documents.
