Technology to support your studies
Digital textbooks
Investigate to see if the book you are looking for is available in a digital format by searching the Accessible Textbook Finder. This service helps providers, students, faculty, and publishers find the products, services, and up-to-date accessibility information they need. AccessText is available to everyone; no membership required. AccessText may indicate that the textbook being sought is available from its own repository or from another source including:
- Bookshare - FREE to qualifying members, Bookshare provides books in a range of formats including Word, EPub, DAISY* and Braille Refreshable Format (BRF). ARS will certify qualifying members.
- Learning Ally - has a library of audio-books books in audio format and DAISY for members who qualify. ARS has an organizational membership.
- VitalSource
- Gutenburg Project
- Academic Ebooks
- Hathi Trust Digital Library - login using your onyen and password
- The Online Books Page
ARS connected students needing assistance obtaining a digital textbook should complete the Alternative Format / E-Text - Information, Procedure and Request Form.
If no electronic copy is available from any of the sources ARS can convert a 'hard-copy' into a digital copy; please Please note that such requests will take a minimum of 10 Business Days to fulfill. Textbooks converted by ARS may need to have the binding broken to be scanned. The UNC Student Stores Coursepack office will put a spiral binder on the book at no charge; however they may not be willing to buy back the book at the end of the semester once the binding has been broken.
Operating system accessibility features
- MAC - MAC in-built accessibility features - includes text to speech, zoom, etc.
- Windows - Windows in-built accessibility features - includes text to speech, zoom
Planning and organization of homework
- University of Minnesota - Assignment Calculator
- University of Arkansas - Paper Wizard
- Indiana State - Assignment Calculator
- SJSU Library Assignment Calculator
- University of Toronto - The Assignment Calculator
- UNC-Greensboro - Assignment Calculator
- Also check out:
Supporting writing and reading
Text to speech
- ClaroRead - MAC & Win - is the primary component of the ClaroRead suite and has a text to speech feature. It is available at no cost from ITS.
- Windows 10 has Narrator.
- The macOS has the VoiceOver text-to-speech feature built into the operating system: look in System Preferences, Accessibility, VoiceOver for options.
- Immersive Reader is part of the Learning Tools suite and is available in Word, Word Online, OneNote, OneNote Online, Outlook Online, and Microsoft Edge.
- Natural Reader Online is free and reads many types of documents including DOC, TXT, PDF. Word Talk is a free Word plugin, which also allows saving to MP3 which can be listened to anywhere.
Speech to text
- Voice typing in Google Docs - in Chrome
- Otter.ai