Kurzweil 3000

Kurzweil 3000 is an accessibility software designed to help students access course materials in college. With functions such as text-to-speech, highlighting, and integrated notetaking and brainstorming, this assistive technology enables students with learning differences to fully engage in what they are learning and to focus on the tasks at hand.

A free download and license of this software is available to all Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff.

Get Kurzweil 3000

1. Request a Kurzweil 3000 License

  • If you are not logged into Single Sign-On (SSO), you will be prompted to log in with your Dartmouth credentials.  Scroll down and answer the questions and submit the form. Shortly after, you will receive an email from Kurzweil.

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Screenshot confirming license request: "...you will be receiving an email shortly from Kurzweil. The email will include your username and password as well as the links to download different versions of Kurzweil 3000"

2. You will receive a "Kurzweil 3000 Account Activated!" email

  • This email will contain your login credentials, links to download Kurzweil 3000, tutorials, and more.

 

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Image of the email from Kurzweil with login credentials, download links, and more

SAS students who requested one-on-one training will receive an email from Assistive.Technology@dartmouth.edu to schedule.

Kurzweil 3000 Built-in Tools

  • OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
  • Picture and Talking Dictionary
  • Read text in Word, PDF, EPUB, RTF, Daisy, and on the Web
  • 31 Natural Text-to-Speech voices in over 18 languages and dialects
  • Create Brainstorm documents and Draft documents
  • Magnify text
  • Highlight, Spell check, and more

Find additional information about features and uses for Kurzweil 3000 on our Comparison of Kurzweil 3000 vs. Read&Write page.

Alternative Format Textbooks

Kurzweil 3000 can be used to create alternative formats of textbooks. Once a file is converted into the Kurzweil format, the software will highlight the text and read aloud so the student can follow along. It also has many features beyond text-to-speech, such as highlighting and extracting information for outlines.

Tutorials

How to Read a PDF with Kurzweil in Windows

How to Read a PDF with Kurzweil on a Mac

Additional Resources

Tutorials about the many features available in Kurzweil may be found at Kurzweil Academy - Resources, Webinars, Handout, Videos & More from Kurzweil Education.

There is also a Chrome extension available that you can utilize to have website content read aloud to you. It will also read screenshots and PDF files. Information on how to set that up can be found here: Kurzweil Read the Web Extension

Feel free to reach out to us at assistive.technology@dartmouth.edu with any questions.