Student Helpdesk

Below you can find about a host of different Accessibility features that are available in Microsoft 365 apps to help get the best out of your learning experience!

Found under the View Ribbon Immersive Reader is a feature that presents a document in an easier format and can even read it aloud. The immersive reader is most effective when used within the Microsoft 365 online version of apps with some limited features available in desktop applications.

Immersive Reader can read your text aloud by word or document with text to speech. You can change the speed, sound, and even the language of the reading voice.

To suit your visual preferences you can easily adjust the formatting of the text including; column width, page, and font colour, text spacing and font size. You also break up words into Syllables and have different parts of speech; Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs, highlighted in different colours.

The line focus feature can be used to limit the number of lines of text that are showing like a reading ruler. With Picture Dictionary if you click certain words it will show a picture. You can also change the language, either by word or full document by using Translate.

Why not check out this ‘How to use the Immersive Reader’ Microsoft training video below to find out more:

We recommend completing this walk-through guide created by Microsoft to fully get grips with the Immersive Reader.

Found under the Home Ribbon in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote online. Dictation lets you use speech-to-text to author content all you need is a microphone and reliable internet connection. It’s a quick and easy way to get your thoughts out and is a great tool if you struggle with writing and would find it easier to dictate your ideas and work directly into your document document to transform into text.

You can also change the dictation language with 20 to choose from. If English isn’t your first language you may find it easier to dictate in your preferred language and then translate it to English later using the Translate tool. In Word you can also access some settings including the ability to turn on Auto Punctuation to help you further, just turn Dictate on and select the setting icon.

Check out the video below on how to use dictation and voice commands in Microsoft Word:

Head over to the Microsoft website to find out more, with information and tips on what you can say to get dictate to write what you want, exactly how you want it:

Found under the Review and View Ribbon in some desktop apps and within Immersive reader in other online apps. The Translate tool is available in most Microsoft 365 applications and allows you to easily translate a whole document or just a specific section of it. With a choice of over 70 different languages, this is prefect for people where English isn’t there first language; making your resources more inclusive.

Watch the video below to see Translate in action and exactly how it works:

Microsoft Lens previously known as Office Lens is a mobile app available on

both Android and iOS. It is great way to capture information from whiteboards, handouts, digitize your handwritten notes or anything with a lot of text.

You can use Microsoft Lens to help keep organised and from losing handouts and notes by keeping all learning materials in one place. Lens scans the item, a whiteboard for example by taking a photo, you can then trim and enhance it to eliminate shadows and odd angles. Convert the image to PDF, Word, PowerPoint, or Excel files. Save them to OneNote, OneDrive, or your local device, you will no longer need to worry about misplacing anything.

With Immersive Reader and all its tools built in you can send images to Immersive Reader directly within the app, making it really accessible and a great tool. To see the immersive reader in action what this video: How to use Office Lens and Immersive Reader on Android

For further Information and how it works click the button below:

The Math tool found in the Draw Ribbon of OneNote can be used to help solve equations. OneNote will recognise the math equation and presents you with a list of relevant options, it then shows the answer. You can see the steps involved in solving it, sometimes there is more than one way of solving so you can get OneNote to show you them all. These steps can also be viewed in the Immersive Reader.

Once you understand the solutions you can get more experience and test yourself by generating a practice quiz in Microsoft Forms by selecting ‘Generate a practice quiz’. Forms then uses AI to create set of similar questions, you can even select how many questions you want. Once chosen, the quiz will then open on the same page directly in Class Notebook.

The quiz gives you the opportunity to work independently on your maths skills, when you submit your answers you will get immediate feedback.

Class Notebook allows you to type but also hand draw directly on a page so you can use which ever you are most comfortable with.

Check out this how to use OneNote math features video below to see it in action:

We recommend completing this walk-through guide created by Microsoft to fully get grips with the Math tool in OneNote, just click the button.