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BeeLine Reader Adds Color to Bookshare

Bookshare is now offering an award-winning accessibility feature that helps readers maintain focus and improves visual tracking ability. This integration is made possible through a partnership with social impact startup BeeLine Reader.

The idea behind BeeLine Reader’s technology is to make text easier to read by using eye-guiding color gradients. These gradients wrap from the end of one line to the beginning of the next, reducing the incidence of line transition errors. Readers of all ages and skill levels can use BeeLine to make reading easier and more enjoyable. Many readers—especially those with dyslexia, ADHD, and vision impairments—find that BeeLine allows them to read with unprecedented fluency and ease.

Bookshare members who read with Bookshare Web Reader, our free browser-based reading tool, can now add BeeLine’s color gradients to text by activating the BeeLine feature through the Settings menu. This feature is free.

First, go to My Bookshare and select a title and click “Read Now.” You will see this pop-up message:

Pop-up screen that asks members if they want to try BeeLine Reader

 

Click on the “Yes, I’ll try it!” button and then select BeeLine from the Settings menu:

screen shot of the Bookshare Web Reader settings window that allows you to select font face, font size, text and background color, and display format

 

You can choose between several color schemes. The BeeLine Reader text will look like this:

Screen shot of a passage from a book showing text in gradients of color in blue, black and red

 

Bookshare conducted a study with mentor teachers who evaluated BeeLine Reader. All of the study participants said they would like to use BeeLine Reader with Bookshare content. Said one teacher, “I am very excited about introducing this assistive technology to my special education and general education teachers. It provides struggling students the opportunity to succeed in reading. I am very, very excited!”

BeeLine’s technology is currently under study at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford Medical School. The study is being run by the director of the Institute, Dr. Joyce Liao. She and her colleagues are investigating BeeLine’s benefits for readers with various visual impairments, both congenital and acquired. BeeLine has previously been featured by the American Optometric Association.

We encourage you to visit the Bookshare Help Center to learn how to use BeeLine Reader with Bookshare Web Reader and give it a try today.

To learn more about BeeLine Reader and how you can use it to read websites, email, and PDFs, visit: www.BeeLineReader.com

 

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