About Read&Write

Read&Write is a literacy support tool from Everway that provides reading, writing, studying, and research tools to help all learners engage with digital content more independently. Its text-to-speech feature reads digital content aloud with dual-color highlighting, allowing users to follow along at their own pace. Additional features include speech-to-text dictation, simplified text rewording, picture dictionaries, audio maker, and highlighting tools for collecting and organizing key information.

Syracuse University maintains a site license for Read&Write for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, as well as browser extensions for Chrome and Edge. The customizable toolbar works across commonly used platforms and file types, including Microsoft Word, Google Docs, PDFs, and web browsers.

Read&Write is available to all Syracuse University students, faculty, and staff, and supports a wide range of learning needs and preferences. It is especially useful for:

• Students with ADHD or focus-related challenges

• Students with low vision or visual processing conditions

• Students using or exploring assistive technology more broadly

• Multilingual learners and international students

• Students managing heavy reading loads across multiple courses

• Adult learners juggling full-time jobs and/or family responsibilities

• Anyone who finds writing organization or proofreading challenging

• Anyone who prefers processing information through listening rather than reading, or who otherwise benefits from hearing content read aloud

Installing Read&Write

1. Visit the Read&Write Software Downloads page and select the Group/Unlimited License (USA) option for your desired package: Windows desktop, Mac desktop, Chrome/Edge browser extension, or the iOS or Android app. This will launch the package installation.

2. When prompted to sign in, choose Microsoft 365 and log in using your Syracuse University email address and password.

3. Begin using the tool.

Tips for Launching the Read&Write Chrome Extension

• If upon installation and selecting the extension icon you are not prompted to login, you may need to clear your browser cache, restart your machine, or download the Read&Write desktop application for Windows or Mac OS. 

• For best results when signing into Read&Write with Microsoft, please go to office.com and sign in using your Syracuse University email. Open a blank online Word file and select the Read&Write extension icon while in that document. This will ensure that Read&Write detects the Microsoft account properly and is able to prompt its own login page. 

Add the OrbitNote Document Reader

OrbitNote is a web-based tool that lets you open, read, create, and interact with PDFs and other digital documents in an accessible, collaborative way. Users can access the reading, writing, studying, and research tools they need at school, home, or work. Having document text read aloud with dual color highlighting, along with additional support tools, helps every learner gain confidence and work independently at their own pace. Users can even upload static images with text to OrbitNote and turn them into accessible PDFs that can be read aloud with OrbitNote.

Key Features

• Makes images with text and image-only PDFs into accessible and interactable text that can be read aloud, highlighted, etc., via its OCR (“Scan Text”) feature.

• Enables text-to-speech so users can listen to the text in their document and follow along, as well as use foreign language translation, dictionaries, and other accessibility tools

• Highlight text, leave comments, produce and insert voice notes, and draw or type annotations

• Collaborate and share your documents in OrbitNote with others using Google Drive, OneDrive, Google Classroom, and more

• Learn about how to use all of OrbitNote’s features by viewing the instructional videos and text-based guide they have available in the OrbitNote dashboard

How to Start

1. Go to the OrbitNote website / dashboard
   Visit orbit.texthelp.com or the OrbitNote dashboard.

2. Sign in
   Sign in using a Google or Microsoft account. Granting OrbitNote certain permissions will be required (for access to Google Drive or OneDrive, etc.).

3. Open PDFs
   You can open PDFs from local files, from Google Drive, from OneDrive. You can drag & drop or select via file picker on the dashboard. If it’s a PDF in Google Drive, you can also use “Open with → OrbitNote.”

4. Use the tools
   Once the PDF is open, you’ll see the OrbitNote toolbar. From there, you can annotate (text, drawing, shapes), highlight, use text-to-speech, use vocabulary tools, leave comments or voice annotations, etc.

5. Sharing / feedback / collaboration
   You can share annotated PDFs via Drive, OneDrive, etc.

Additional Information

 Everway has a number of free training resources including tutorials and videos in their Training Guides repository, including:

• Read&Write for Chrome Training Guide (2025)

• Read&Write for Windows Training Guide (2025)