We were recently asked how to slow down the reading of text on an audio book by a teacher some of whose pupils have reading difficulties. She was using Barrington Stokes books, accompanied by audio on CD as her pupils found it easier to follow the printed text if they could listen to the audio recording at the same time. Unfortunately, the text was read too quickly for some of her pupils to follow easily.

If you are using Windows Media Player to play the audio recording of the book, it is possible to slow down the play back speed. 

1. Begin playing a file.
2. Click the arrow below the 'Now Playing' tab, at the top of the screen, point to Enhancements, and then click Play Speed Settings. (see image, right)
3. Move the Play Speed slider to the speed at which you want to play the content, or click the Slow, Normal, or Fast link.

The full instructions are available online at:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-vista/Change-playback-speed-in-Windows-Media-Player.

We have just uploaded the six TeeJay Maths secondary books to the Books for All Database, which means that all the TeeJay textbooks are now available for pupils with print disabilities to use. The files have been kindly supplied to us by Tom and John at TeeJay, and there are strict terms and conditions regarding who can download them and use them: they are only to be used by upils who cannot access the printed books..

The books are in PDF format and so are accessible on screen for learners with physical or motor impairments, mild visual impairment, or reading difficulties. When you open them in Adobe Reader you can:

• use keyboard or mouse to navigate;
• zoom in and out (press CTRL + and CTRL - or use the buttons on the toolbar);
• use text-to-speech to have the text read out;
• use the TypeWriter tool or the Comment and Markup tools to type answers on the page, add drawings and diagrams, highlight text, and add labels and notes.

See this video for how to use some of these facilities in Adobe Reader.A few caveats, however:

• if you use the built-in Read Out Loud tool in Adobe Reader, you'll find it tends to read the whole page, so you're better off with a text reader where you can select what you want to read, like PDFaloud, ClaroRead, Natural Reader, Penfriend, Ivonas MiniReader, etc;
• the books don't re-flow and you can't change the page colours - something to do with the way they were originally laid out.

You can also read the books with the new free Nook Study reader software. This has built-in text-to-speech which can use high quality voices like Heather and Stuart, and it highlights the text as it reads. You can select the text you want to have read out, so it's a bit better than Adobe Reader's own Read Out Loud tool. Nook Study also has study tools for bookmarking, highlighting and adding notes to the book. See Allan's blog for more on Nook Study.