At the heart of Pivot Interactives is a mission to make science more accessible for ALL students. This means that accessibility features are a true hallmark of Pivot Interactives.

To aid students with limited vision or reading difficulties, a screen reader has been built into the platform for activities. You will see it next to all components that contain text:

That's the screen reader button! This will read the prompt associated with this icon. Click this on any section of text to have the section read to you.

When you want to hear a text, click the speaker icon. While the text is read, the speaker icon will pulsate, as you see below:

When the text is done being read, it will return to a whited-out button.

The voice is dependent on your browser. Chrome appears to use a male voice, while Firefox appears to use a female voice. These voices are not controlled (or managed) by Pivot Interactives.

The volume is set by your device - not the site. To control the sound levels, you will need to use the volume controls on your device.

Note: The text reader ignores the "Mute Site" function of your browser - this will work even if the tab is muted. However, the volume controls on your device may still mute the sound. If you click the speak and do not hear a sound, ensure that your volume is turned up and that your speakers work.

This reads section-by-section. Notice in the picture below that there are two speaker icons. That's because the first section is controlled by the first icon and the second section is controlled by the second icon.

Sub-components, like answers to multiple-choice questions, have separate speaker icons. You can see this in the multiple-choice question here. To have this question fully read, the student would need to click the question, allow it to read and finish, then click the second icon to have the options read.

If you are listening to one reader and you click a second one while it is playing, it will stop the first reader and begin the second.