This is another post about Google’s Chrome browser and accessibility features than can be added to it. I’ve already written about Speakit for text-to-speech HERE, about Voice Search  for searching with Voice Recognition HERE, and about Speech Recognizer for general voice recognition HERE. I’ve written about running Chrome from a USB flash drive HERE.  Today, I’m writing about a fourth add-in. This one can be extremely helpful for anyone who faces challenges with reading.

             

Readability Redux for Chrome is a variant of Readability that runs in Chrome and that is even more customizable than the original.  With the click of a button, this add-in removes distracting clutter and customizes the presentation of text on a web page.  For example, from the top page shown here to the one below it.

After going to the Chrome Web Store from within Chrome, searching for Readability Redux, and installing it, you will see the icon indicated below to the right of Chrome’s address bar.

Before using Readability Redux, you will want to customize the way you view pages. To do this, right-click on the icon and select ‘Options’, or click on the settings icon (wrench/spanner on the extreme right) and navigate to the Options screen (Tools–Extensions–Readability Redux–Options). The image below shows the options that may be adjusted.

Perhaps surprisingly, adjusting the width of the margins is the option I’ve found most useful.  Limiting the number of words in a line of text can make a huge difference in terms of readability! Speakit works well to provide text-to-speech in pages that have been adjusted by Readability Redux.