ReadOn  ReadOn is a comprehensive learning tool designed to assist people of all ages to overcome the reading problems associated with dyslexia. Reading is a complex process and when it is not mastered students will struggle to become independent readers. Regardless of reading level, ReadOn allows the student to experience reading with minimal supervision and support. Mistakes can be made and risks taken, hopefully resulting in an increased willingness to read, improved reading ability and higher self esteem. ReadOn incorporates specific learning strategies to help people overcome reading problems. In other words ReadOn helps the user learn to read, as well as being an assistive tool. Features include: - Visual tracking exercises
- Comprehension support
- Auditory feedback
- Customised visual cues for problem words
- Create, load, edit and save stories and articles in electronic format
- Load text from books and magazines using optical character recognition (OCR)
- Multi-user support
- Personalised settings to meet individual needs
- Easily networked
Who can benefit from ReadOn? Used as the basis of a home or school reading program, ReadOn can benefit:  - Classroom teachers who would like to strengthen the reading skills of all young learners (including dyslexic students).
- Parents who want an interactive learning tool to improve and monitor their child’s reading skills.
- Anyone (adult or child) who wants a dyslexic-friendly software program for improving reading and comprehension.
How does it work? ReadOn helps develop student learning strategies and reading skills over time. As a prerequisite for the process the student must have mastered the upper and lower case symbols of the alphabet. - The first step of the process involves the parent, tutor or older student sourcing appropriate reading material and entering the text into ReadOn. Texts can be typed directly into the software, or copied from other files or the internet. If the material is in hard copy form like a book or magazine, ReadOn’s Optical Character Recognition function can be used.
- Once the text has been entered the student can use ReadOn’s visual tracking options to read it. ReadOn uses word, phrase and paragraph highlighting to remove any distraction from the surrounding text while reading. Students can easily focus on the current word, phrase or paragraph, rather than being distracted by all the other text on the page. When moving through the text, highlighting can be set to either the full word, phrase or paragraph, or can include a sweeping of the word where each letter is highlighted one at a time. ReadOn also offers a spell reading option, where each letter of a word is named and highlighted, before the whole word is read.
 - Students can then use ReadOn to read texts independently from parents, teachers or tutors. Instead of asking a third party for assistance on tricky words, ReadOn’s auditory word assistance can be utilised. When comprehension is lost, ReadOn can also read words, phrases and whole paragraphs back to the student.
- The words for which the student sought assistance are automatically recorded in an individual word bank. This information can be printed or extracted and used as a basis for further work, which might include multi-sensory activities, visual imagery, clay models or word lists.
- Words appearing frequently in the word bank may indicate that the student is triggering on those words and would benefit from the symbol mastery procedure. They could, for example, create a painting or a clay model that represents the word. This visual clue can then be added to ReadOn and be used to assist with the student's decoding in the future.
As the student continues to work through this cycle, self-confidence and reading ability should continue to improve. As time goes on, the student should require less and less external assistance. ReadOn allows the student to learn at his or her own pace and progress can be continually monitored with the support of the individual word bank. ReadOn Case Studies Joseph Joseph had problems with decoding and comprehension, and was quite open about his dislike of reading! Discover how ReadOn helped him overcome his aversion and improve his reading ability. Click here for Joseph's case study Anton Anton was passionate about reading but struggled with comprehension and was overwhelmed by research tasks. Find out how ReadOn helped overcome his difficulties. Click here for Anton's case study Hannah This bright little girl was struggling with reading, which led to a loss of self-confidence and difficulties in other areas. ReadOn helped develop her skills and rekindle her love of learning. Click here for Hannah's case study Amanda Amanda works with students who, for lots of different reasons, have been referred to her ‘at risk’ programme. She uses ReadOn to provide access to texts, address different learning styles and provide motivation. Click here for Amanda's case study Download a ReadOn leaflet here. Click here for a 5-minute overview of ReadOn's features. View a video demonstration. Read the Guardian's review | 
