Capti Narrator for Education: Effective & Accessible Teaching & Learning
Author: Charmtech Labs LLC - Contact: www.captivoice.com
Published: 2015/08/27 - Updated: 2016/06/11
Contents: Summary - Main - Related Publications
Synopsis: Capti Narrator is an award-winning productivity application for listening to everything you want to read on iOS, Windows, and Mac.
Main Digest
Charmtech Labs LLC announced the launch of Capti Narrator for Education enabling students and educators to become more productive.
Capti for Education introduces organization-level accounts with user management and competitive wholesale pricing for its premium features.
Capti will be useful not only to students learning English and students with reading difficulties, but also to general-education students.
Capti Narrator is an award-winning productivity application for listening to everything you want to read on iOS, Windows, and Mac.
Capti is free for individuals; additional features such as high quality voices and the premium subscription plan are available for purchase. For example, the premium plan costs $1.99 per month or $9.99 for 6 months. The price of voices varies from $1.99 to $29.99, depending on the platform and the manufacturer.
Capti Narrator for Education enables schools to create organizational accounts, invite students to use Capti, and then grant students access to premium features. Depending on the number of students, the price for the premium plan could be as low as a $1.99 per student per year, compared to the same price per month for individual users. Substantial educational discounts are also available for premium voices.
"We are happy to announce Capti for Education in time for the back-to-school season," said Dr. Yevgen Borodin, President of Charmtech Labs LLC. "This revolutionary productivity tool will save time for students and educators by allowing them to add what they need to read to their Playlists and then listen to it in class or on the go."
Capti supports many popular content formats such as EPUB, PDF, and DOC that can be added to the Playlist from numerous sources, including files stored on the local computer and other iOS apps, Cloud storage services: Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive; read-it-later lists: Instapaper and Pocket; and book repositories: Bookshare (300K titles restricted to people with disabilities) and Gutenberg books (49K titles open to everyone).
"Capti Narrator is bringing instruction into the 21st century by enabling students to listen to their reading materials anywhere on a variety of devices," said Michael Espina, the CEO, SchoolSource Technologies LLC, a company that promotes and facilitates key educational vendor collaboration. "What makes Capti especially appealing to educational institutions is its wide applicability for special ed., ESL, and general ed. students."
The content can be read visually or narrated in different languages and accents by high quality voices from IVONA, Acapela, and NeoSpeech. Capti will highlight the text it reads, enabling those with reading difficulties to follow along. Capti Cloud enables users to synchronize their Playlist and switch seamlessly between their devices.
"Having that Playlist is huge, you can easily put content into the Playlist to read and listen as you go," says Robert Hagan, the Director of Learning Technology and Instruction at the East Hampton School District in New York, who frequently uses Capti Narrator himself. "I have an hour drive home, so when I get a long document from the New York State Education Department, I simply put it my Playlist."
Capti Narrator for iOS was first revealed at the CES'2014, and Capti for Windows and Mac was released a year later. Capti Narrator for iOS has been translated to 10 major languages, and it can speak in 26 languages. Capti for Windows and Mac is available only in English, but it currently includes voices in 12 major languages.
As a valuable universally accessible technology, Capti was distinguished with several prestigious awards, including the 2014 FCC Chairman's Award for Advancing Accessibility. For his work on Capti Narrator, Charmtech's CEO was named a 2015 MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35.
Capti Narrator for iOS v2.0 Brings New Capabilities to Everyone Who Prefers Listening over Reading
The release of Capti Narrator for iOS v2.0 makes listening to digital content even more convenient with new content sources, enhanced navigation, read-along view, new voices, and premium subscription. This major release, just in time for the school year, makes Capti the most comprehensive education and productivity tool for listening to digital content from a variety of sources on iOS, Mac, and Windows.
"We are on a mission to make people more productive and empower them to listen to what they need to read." said Dr. Yevgen Borodin, President of Charmtech Labs LLC. "For example, by listening while commuting or exercising, students and professionals can easily make up for, at least, an hour of reading downtime per day."
Capti v2.0 adds support of Microsoft's OneDrive Cloud storage alongside the previously supported Dropbox and Google Drive, enabling Capti users to listen to their documents wherever the documents may be.
In addition to Bookshare, a source with 300K books available strictly to people with print disabilities, this release adds a collection of over 49K free books from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org). Also, Capti users can now add web links and other content from any app that supports the iOS Share feature.
Playlist synchronization is also improved, allowing users to start listening on one device and pick up from where they left off on another.
Capti v2.0 can now display the content of each track and optionally highlight the text as it reads, enabling those with reading difficulties to follow along.
Capti also adds the ability to navigate content at different levels of granularity such as headings, pages, paragraphs, etc.
For structured documents, such as books, Capti can display a table of contents.
And those who want to further enhance their experience with Capti can now subscribe for a premium plan for only $1.99 a month or $9.99 for 6 months.
Premium features include full-text search in the Playlist, displaying images in tracks, and the ability to add documents up to 100MB in size.
Capti already boasts a collection of over 150 voices speaking in 26 languages and a variety of accents. Capti v2.0 adds new quality voices:
- Sharon and kid Justin (U.S. English),
- Lisa (Australian English),
- Rhona (Welsh English),
- kids Jonas and Lea (German),
- kids Emilio and Valeria (U.S. Spanish and English),
- and Rodrigo (Spanish).
The v.2.0 release comes in time for the new school year.
Capti has already been adopted by numerous students and teachers around the United States. "Having that Playlist is huge, you can easily put content into the Playlist to read and listen to as you go," says Robert Hagan, the Director of Learning Technology and Instruction at the East Hampton School District in New York, who frequently uses Capti Narrator himself. "I have an hour drive home, so when I get a long document from the New York State Education Department, I simply put it my Playlist."
Capti Narrator for iOS was first revealed at the CES'2014, and Capti for Windows and Mac was released a year later.
Capti Narrator for iOS has been translated to 10 major languages, and it can speak in 26 languages.
Capti for Windows and Mac is available only in English, but it currently includes voices in 12 major languages.
As a valuable universally accessible technology, Capti was distinguished with several prestigious awards, including the 2014 FCC Chairman's Award for Advancing Accessibility. For his work on Capti Narrator, Charmtech's CEO was named a 2015 MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35.
Capti Features
FREE FEATURES
- Text to Speech: Turn any text into an audio-book; listen hands-free and eyes-free
- Save for Later: Save documents and web articles for later in your Playlist, synchronize and access them offline
- Sophisticated Navigation: Jump to the next or previous word, sentence, paragraph, heading, or page
- Screen-Reader Support: Extensively customized for screen readers used by people who are blind
PREMIUM PLAN BENEFITS
- Full-text search of your Playlist: The search algorithm is intelligent, and will guess the best matching tracks even when the exact match cannot be found.
- Store and view images with text: In tracks created from EPUB, PDF, or DOC(X) documents, you will be able to see both text and images.
- File Size Limit: Add documents and books that are up to 100MB in size; default limit is 10MB. Word Translation: Right-click on any word in the track to translate the word to your language (available on Windows and Mac only).
Charmtech Labs LLC was founded by a group of computer science professors and Ph.D. students who wanted to go beyond academic research and make a difference in the real world. Armed with years of cutting-edge research and software-development experience, they set out to remove barriers between people and information. Initially inspired by helping people with vision impairments to overcome information accessibility problems, they are now bringing their screen-reading technology to the mainstream market. Their flagship product, Capti Narrator, revolutionizes the way people consume digital content.
For more information see www.captivoice.com
Capti has been developed, in part, with support from the Department of Education, using the NIDRR grant number H133S110023. However, the contents do not represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.
Dr. Borodin is the President and CEO of Charmtech Labs LLC, the company he co-founded to remove barriers between people and information. He also serves as a Research Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University. Dr. Borodin is well-known for his research on making computers more accessible to people with disabilities. His research has been funded by over $4M dollars in U.S. federal grants. He has co-authored 50 publications and patents. He received numerous awards, including the FCC Chairman's Award for Advancing Accessibility, LaunchPad's Launch Your Stars Award, MIT Technology Review Innovator under 35, etc. Dr. Borodin has earned his A.S. and B.Tech. degrees from Alfred State College of Technology and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Stony Brook University in New York. He is a member of ACM, IEEE, and SigmaXi.
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