Assistive Technology

Smartpens

For students with certain disabilities, SmartPens can be helpful.  A SmartPen is a special pen and notebook that can record all (or parts of) a lecture while a person is taking notes.  If the student’s written notes are limited or have gaps, the pen can easily play back the audio for a specific part of the lecture that the student may have missed and need to hear again.

The ADR has SmartPens available to loan to students.  If you are interested in learning more about this technology, please email accessibility@wellesley.edu. Our Student Access Advocates are available to train you and answer any questions you may have.

Kami

Kami is a free website and Chrome extension that offers annotation tools such as highlighting, underlining, commenting, and adding text boxes to documents. It also provides Text Recognition (OCR). Click here to learn more and download the application.

Kurzweil

Kurzweil 3000 is literacy software with a Text-to-Speech program that can read textbooks, articles and the web aloud. Kurzweil also has tools for writing and study support. There are a variety of voices, reading speeds and languages. Kurzweil also has a dictation feature for hands free writing support.

Wellesley College has a Kurzweil 3000 site-wide license for full time students and employees of the College. For access, please either: 

1. Login to an existing account here, or:
2. Use the User Self-Registration to create an account

After you have an account, you can choose between a web-based service or download the software directly onto your computer. We recommend the desktop version for the best functionality. 

• Kurzweil for Mac Version 16 web license
• Kurzweil for Windows Version 16 web license

Other ways to use Kurzweil:

• Kurzweil Firefly Web Browser Application (Has most, but not all, of the features of the desktop app)
• Kurzweil Firefly App for iOS
• Chrome Extension (For reading on the web)

User Guides: 

Product and Version Guides 

Kurzweil Academy 

Kurzweil Academy YouTube Channel

For those wishing to use voice/speech recognition software, Kurzweil (see "Text-to-Speech") has a speech recognition function. Alternatively, Speechnotes is a free, and easy to use app. Speechnotes can be found here.

To improve accessibility for all viewers, consider captioning videos that will be used in a classroom or for the general public. 

There are many widely available tools that can enable you to easily caption short, previously recorded videos. For help on longer projects, please see the three resources below. 

1. You can use Amara to caption your own videos. You can caption videos for Amara-user use for free or pay to have your videos unpublished. You can also pay for captioning through Amara.
2. Rev is a fee-based captioning service the college often uses. Contact us if you are interested in options related to paid captioning.
3. Depending on the video, the Student Access Advocates (SAAs) may be able to caption videos and/or provide transcripts, alt-text, and other services. Please contact ADR through accessibility@wellesley.edu or the SAAs at studentaccessadvocates@wellesley.edu to see if they can help.

As a Wellesley employee or student you can use SensusAccess (login and download like Kurzweil) to automatically convert documents into a range of alternate media. This includes audio books (MP3 and DAISY), e-books (EPUB, EPUB3 and Mobi) and digital Braille. The service can also be used to convert inaccessible documents such as image-only PDF files, JPG pictures and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into more accessible formats. Click here for a guide on SensusAccess and more information.