EasyTutor is revolutionary software solution by Dolphin that aids person with difficulties in reading, writing and spelling. EasyTutor can be a boon for anyone with learning disabilities especially children with Dyslexia who find it difficult to deal with reading and writing words.

EasyTutor works on top of Office applications and any third party applications and helps users work with ease. For example, EasyTutor toolbar appears on top of a Word document and provides various options to aid users work with their Word file.

EasyTutor comes in two versions:

• EasyTutor Standard
• EasyTutor Plus

Figure 1: EasyTutor Plus Version with Scanning Option

EasyTutor Plus version comes with the additional features of scanning from paper or a PDF file (Optical Character Recognition or OCR) and echoing text dictated using Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software.

EasyTutor Features

This section includes explanations of different EasyTutor options:

• Play and Stop
• Font
• Spacing
• Homophones
• Check
• Save

Play and Stop

EasyTutor enables you to read text of Word document as well as web pages. The Play and Stop buttons on the toolbar enable you to control the reading. You can read the entire document or from any section in the document. To start the reading, click the Play button.

EasyTutor provides multiple ways to stop reading of content. One way is to click the Stop button on the toolbar. Alternatively, press the Control button of the keyboard or just click any blank space on the screen to stop the reading.

You can also make EasyTutor speak whatever you select with the mouse. As a result, you can read emails or PDF files without even having to click Play!

To control the speed, volume at which EasyTutor speaks, click the Settings option on the toolbar.

Font

EasyTutor's Font option allows you to adjust appearance of text and thereby improve the readability of content in a Word document. People with learning disabilities often find it difficult to read text in the format which is presented to them. Font option enables children as well as adults to increase font size, change the font style and set colour according to their requirements.

Different settings of Font option are:

• Font style: EasyTutor provides you with three more readable and popular fonts, Trebuchet MS, Microsoft Sans Serif and the specially-designed Tiresias font.
• Font color: EasyTutor enables you to change both foreground text color as well as background color.
• Font size: EasyTutor not only allows you to increase or decrease the font size of the whole document or a web page but also just select portions of the Word document as shown below.

Figure 2: Font size increase ONLY for a selected portion of the document.

Note: In Internet Explorer, Font submenu includes the two options related to Font Size.

Spacing

EasyTutor enables you to change spacing between two words and two consecutive lines and paragraphs as per your preferences. This function can be used in Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer.

Character spacing enables you to set the space between two words. Some children find it easier to focus and read texts where the words are spread out. Similarly, some find it easier to read text where there is distance between two lines of text or paragraph.

All three spacing options have a toggle effect. For example, clicking on Change Line Spacing, will first increase the line spacing for two levels and then return the text back to the original format.

Homophones

Homophones are words that sound alike but are different in spelling, meaning or origin. For example, "hour" and "our" or "pair" and "pear". To view Homophones within the document, Use the Show Homophone option on clicking the Homophone button in the toolbar. EasyTutor highlights the words by indicating the homophones in blue. You can change the blue color in the Homophone Settings.

The Homophone settings include the list of Homophones that would be highlighted in a document.

Figure 3: Homophone Settings Tab

Check

EasyTutor contains an integrated word- and document- checking feature. It is an integration of the Word spell checker, thesaurus and a separate homophone checker into one simple Check button. Children with learning disabilities often find it difficult to type the correct spellings. The Check option enables them to check the spellings in a Word document in an easy way.

The Check option makes the checking of your text and documents easier and more comprehensive, by combining a homophone checker, thesaurus and spellchecker. For example, when you select a word which the Word document highlights with a Spelling mistake and hit the Check option from the toolbar, EasyTutor displays the Check dialog box, which includes:

• List of alternate spelling suggestions for you to choose the correct spelling
• List of meanings (synonyms) in case you want to use another word
• Meaning of the word in pictorial format, wherever available
• Dictionary definitions in form of noun and adjective
• Preview of the word in the sentence where you have used the word
• List to how the word is pronounces
• Lookup for the correct word definitions on the Web. For example: Google search result for 'Definitions of ### on the Web:' where '###' refers to the correct word.

Figure 4: Check dialog box

At times, at the bottom of the window the syllabification of the word also appears. In case the corrected word is a homophone, the Homophone tab will be visible as shown below. The Meaning tab will appear if you click Check when the caret is on a word that has alternative words with the same or similar meaning.

Figure 5: Check dialog box with Homophones and Meanings Tab

Note: Several tabs may be shown at once, depending on the word: choose any of them to work with.

Save

Imagine listening to what you have written in a Word document or and text from any application selected and copied to the Windows clipboard to audio (sound) files in your phone, portable audio player or your iPod! Using the Save option of EasyTutor you can choose to save text to audio or video file.

Children with learning disabilities at times find it easier to understand text when it is read out to them. Saving the text into audio format will help children learn things at a faster pace.

Save Text to Audio Files

EasyTutor lets you save the text in Microsoft Word documents and text from any application selected and copied to the Windows clipboard to audio (sound) files. The Save to Audio file formats are WMA, WAV and Ogg.

If saving an audio file takes time, EasyTutor displays a progress bar to show how much of the conversion is completed. You can select the voice for the audio conversion using the Speech Settings tab.

Save Text to Video Files

EasyTutor allows you to save text to a video file. Saving text in video allows you to watch the text a sentence at a time as it is spoken aloud. While saving in video format, EasyTutor not only enables you to choose the video format, but also choose font style/colour, background colour and border colour.

Conclusion

This article outlines the basic features of EasyTutor that can aid children with learning disabilities to read, write and spell text correctly. If you find EasyTutor interesting and think this can help any child to overcome their reading and writing issues, you can write to us for a demonstration or visit EasyTutor product page to buy EasyTutor.