Read&Write
Listen to documents and web pages aloud, check homophones and collect highlights for reports or study.
Last reviewed: 28 October 2026 · Applies to: Read&Write for Windows, Mac & Google Chrome / Microsoft Edge
These instructions were checked against official Texthelp / Everway documentation on the review date. Toolbar icons and companion features vary slightly between the Windows desktop toolbar, Mac toolbar and browser extension.
A literacy toolbar, alongside keyboard and mouse access
Read&Write provides a toolbar at the top of your screen (or inside your browser) with text-to-speech, Check It proofreading, word prediction, a Screenshot Reader, Screen Masking and highlight collection tools.
It is designed for people who want spoken read-back, visual tracking and proofreading support across documents and web pages (and its toolbar buttons can also be navigated with the keyboard), rather than replacing a full non-visual screen reader such as JAWS or NVDA.
Getting Started
- Play, Pause and Stop speech: Place your cursor in a document or select a sentence on a webpage and click Play on the Read&Write toolbar to hear it read aloud with synchronised dual-colour highlighting.
- Use Screenshot Reader for locked text: When text inside an image, diagram or locked PDF cannot be selected, click Screenshot Reader and draw a box around the area to have it recognised and read aloud.
- Run Check It for spelling and homophones: Click Check It to review spelling, grammar and easily confused homophones (such as their / there or affect / effect) with spoken definitions.
- Use Screen Masking to reduce glare and line-skipping: Turn on Screen Masking to tint the screen and show a movable reading ruler that follows your pointer.
- Highlight and Collect Highlights: Mark key sentences in yellow, blue, green or pink across a document or webpage, then click Collect Highlights to pull only those passages into a new Word or Google Docs summary.
How it sits with other software
- Install the browser extension for web pages. Read&Write for Windows or Mac works best on websites and PDFs in Chrome or Edge when the matching Read&Write browser extension is also installed and signed in.
- Customise the toolbar so it is not overwhelming. In the Chrome or Edge extension, open the More (
…) menu on the toolbar and go to Settings → Features to switch off buttons you never use. On the Windows or Mac desktop toolbar, open the toolbar's Settings / General options to show or hide button groups so the toolbar stays compact. - Turn off Continuous Reading when proofreading short edits. In Speech settings, toggling Continuous Reading off lets Read&Write read one sentence at a time rather than reading the entire rest of the page.
Common problems, and what to do
- Two voices speak at the same time. Avoid running Read&Write speech at the same time as Word's Read Aloud or a screen reader; use one speech tool per task.
- The toolbar covers the top of your window. In Google Docs or Slides with the browser extension, select the Hide up-arrow at the right end of the toolbar to collapse it into a small tab when not in use; on the Windows or Mac desktop toolbar, use the docking or positioning controls on the toolbar to dock or move it clear of your document menus.
- Web pages are not reading aloud properly. Check that the Read&Write extension is enabled in your browser and select the first sentence before clicking Play.
Short practice exercise
- Open an article or report in Word or your browser and launch the Read&Write toolbar.
- Select a paragraph and click Play to listen to it, then click Stop.
- Select two key sentences, mark one with the Yellow highlighter and one with the Green highlighter, and click Collect Highlights to generate a new summary document containing just those two points.
Official Read&Write help links
Need more detailed guidance?
This quick guide covers the basics. Get practical, one-to-one training for Read&Write and other reading and writing tools.
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