5. Study hacks
Productivity = flexibility
Many of the tools specifically designed to improve the accessibility of online content have been widely adopted by many types of users and marketed by companies as general productivity tools. Using these tools can be a great way to hack your studies.
Disability-led innovations for the masses (YouTube, 18m 35s) demonstrates how accessible technologies have been at the forefront of digital innovation for decades, and how current assistive technologies can help us predict the future of computers.
If you enter ‘productivity tools’ into a search engine, you’ll find lists of apps and programs with all sorts of different features to help with all aspects of your life. As individuals, we all have different preferences for how we work. Technologies originally designed to be assistive can have major benefits for all of us. They can assist us with everyday tasks, such as reading and taking notes, to provide a flexible approach to how we work and study. Why not try out some of these tools to see if they might help you?
Tools for all
A lot of operating systems, both for computers and mobile devices, come with a host of inbuilt features designed for accessibility which can also be used as productivity tools. For more about these in-built features see the Apple accessibility and Windows accessibility pages.
Most browsers also have a number of accessibility options that users can change to suit their needs. There are also lots of different browser extensions available to improve web accessibility. ATbar is an example of this kind of extension which has a host of accessibility features for different users. It allows you to magnify text, change the colour contrast of a web page, and even read passages aloud all from one place, without having to change settings for individual web pages.
Text-to-speech
Some people find it easier to take in information when it’s read aloud, so many programs now offer text-to-speech tools. These tools are different to screen readers because they are used to read specific text rather than everything on the screen. This means that they don’t require the same level of expertise to use. These have different features in terms of how much text will be read at a time and whether they will read only from documents or from other sources of information.
Tool | Platform | Free account available | Features |
---|---|---|---|
NaturalReader | Browser based | Yes - free and paid plans |
|
SelectionReader | Google Chrome | Yes |
|
Select to Speak | Android | Yes |
|
Speech-to-text
Many smart assistants such as the Google Home and Amazon Echo use voice recognition functions to identify users and personalise their experiences. It’s also one of the key ways that certain groups of people interact with their digital devices.
Tool | Platform | Free version available | Features |
---|---|---|---|
Dictation | Mac (also available for iOS) | Yes |
|
Dictation | Windows | Yes |
|
Voice Typing | Google Docs | Yes |
|
Dragon | Windows, Mac, iOS and Android | No |
|
Extract text from an image
Sometimes text is contained in an image. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software can extract the text from an image and convert it into editable text that you can copy or read aloud.
Tool | Platform | Free version available | How to use it |
---|---|---|---|
Copyfish | Browser extensions:
|
Yes |
|
Google Drive | Works in the online version | Yes |
|
OneNote | Requires the desktop version and OneDrive | Yes - available via Microsoft 365 with your UQ account. |
|
Find more study tools in the Choose the right tool module.