Tools for Accessibility: Read&Write, Otter.ai

Check what you already have first, because a large part of what those products do is now built into the operating system, the browser and the video platform, at no cost.

Read aloud, dictation, text enlargement, high contrast and reading modes ship with Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. Browsers have a reading view that strips a page down. The main video platforms have live captions. None of this needs a purchase order, and for many mentees the built-in version is better, because it is already on the device and works across everything rather than in one app.

A tool like Read&Write earns its cost in a specific situation: a supported learner who needs one consistent set of reading and writing supports across documents, browser and email, usually with somebody to set it up and keep it working. If nobody in your service will own that, the licences will sit unused.

The transcription part is the one I was most interested in. Having a written record of a session sounded genuinely useful for mentees who miss things.

Be careful with that one, more than with the rest. Transcribing a mentoring session means sending the audio of a confidential conversation to a third party and creating a written record of everything that was said. Both of those need a decision, not a default. Ask before recording, be specific about who hears it and how long it is kept, and remember that a transcript of a session about someone's asylum claim or health is a sensitive record from the moment it exists.

There is also a coverage problem. Otter transcribes a small set of languages, English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, so for many of the women in this project it produces nothing usable. Check the current list against the languages your sessions actually happen in before paying for it.

What often gets you most of the benefit at none of the cost: turn on live captions in the video platform for the session, and send three lines afterwards saying what was decided, who does what, and when you next speak. A short written summary is more useful to someone who missed things than a full transcript she will not read.