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Kurzweil 3000

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Santa Clara University has provided all students, faculty, and staff with access to Kurzweil 3000, a robust platform for text-to-speech. 

Use Kurzweil 3000 to read documents and websites with text-to-speech. When using text-to-speech with Kurzweil, you can customize the voice and the reading speed, and Kurzweil will visually highlight the text as it is read aloud to help you follow along.

The opening page of Pride of Prejudice displayed in Kurzweil 3000. The first line is highlighted.

Kurzweil 3000 includes features beyond text-to-speech that can offer more general support for reading and writing. You can look up or translate unfamiliar words. You can use Kurzweil to annotate documents by highlighting and adding notes. In addition to typing your notes, you can dictate your notes or add voice notes, and you can export your notes as a study guide. You can also use Kurzweil to help brainstorm, outline, and draft essays, using dictation to help you write and text-to-speech to help you edit.

Additionally, Kurzweil 3000 includes Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities, so it can comfortably handle images of text as well as scanned and untagged PDFs. For best results, use high-quality scans or, better yet, documents that have been properly tagged for accessibility.

Kurzweil 3000 includes two key components: the Universal Library and the “Read the Web” extension.

Universal Library

Use Kurzweil 3000’s Universal Library to read individual documents or write outlines and drafts. Here you can upload and read documents (including PDFs and ebooks), and you can create brainstorms, outlines, and drafts for your written assignments.

To access the Universal Library, simply navigate to scu.edu/apps/login/ and then select the tile for Kurzweil 3000.

Under MySCU Portal, a tile for Kurzweil 3000 is visible. Within the tile, a description reads: Read documents and webpages with text-to-speech (TTS)

Read the Web

Use Kurzweil 3000’s Read the Web extension to read individual webpages.

To use Read the Web, you will need to first install and then activate the extension. You may need to periodically reactivate the extension.

Step 1: Install the Extension

Use one of the below links to install Read the Web:

For details, please check out Read the Web: Installation and Troubleshooting (Kurzweil Customer Support).

Step 2: Activate through Universal Library

To activate the extension, first go to Kurzweil’s Universal Library. Then, select the button labeled “Enable Read the Web” (found in the bottom-left corner).

On the Kurzweil 3000 Universal Library, the button labeled Enable Read the Web is pointed out. The button is located near the bottom of the page.

Alert icon Please Note: Because of how single sign-on (SSO) is configured for Kurzweil 3000, you will not be able to log in directly through the extension pop-up itself. The button to sign in with Google will not work. Instead, you must go through the Universal Library and select the button to “Enable Read the Web.”

Step 3: Launch the Extension

After you have installed and activated the extension, you can launch and hide Read the Web via the Kurzweil icon in your browser's toolbar.

The Kurzweil button in the browser toolbar is pointed out. In the browser viewport, the Read the Web extension pop-up is visible.

Learn More

To learn more about Kurzweil 3000, please review the resources below. In particular, we recommend you review Kurzweil’s Getting Started guides to help you get familiar with the product.

If you have trouble logging into Kurzweil 3000 via single sign-on (SSO), please contact the Technology Help Desk. For all other questions or concerns about Kurzweil, please contact the Office of Accessible Education (OAE).