Blog Summery

• Highly Recommended: The reviewer quickly upgraded from the free to paid version and finds Helperbird extremely useful.
• Accessibility & Usability: While designed as an accessibility tool, its features benefit everyone, not just people with disabilities.
• Key Features: Includes dyslexia support, text-to-speech, immersive reader, AI-powered article summaries, and more.
• Extra Tools: Offers convenient extras like speed reading, note-taking, sticky notes, and screenshots.
• Affordable & Supportive: The paid version is inexpensive, support resources are strong, and the company is committed to accessibility.

What is Helperbird?

Helperbird as an Accessibility Tool

Why is it an accessibility tool? Let’s start with what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t make a website accessible. Forget WCAG 2.2, VPAT, and the EAA and all that jazz, Helperbird is more of an Assistive Technology (AT) – a technology that helps an individual access digital content. It focuses on giving the user options when it comes to consuming websites and web-based applications. Many of its features are specifically designed with people with disabilities in mind. To name a few:

• Dyslexia Support
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Highlighter and Page Summarizing
• Immersive Reader & Paragraph Styling
• Reading Ruler
• OCR

You can see a full list with detailed explanations on the Helperbird features page.

Helperbird is so feature-rich that you won’t use everything, but everyone will find their favorite way to use it.  For example, the feature I keep going back to is the Summary Page feature.

Summery Page

With my dyslexia (and ADD), I do much better when I understand quickly what I’m reading. The Summary Page feature uses AI to turn a complex article into a few easy-to-understand paragraphs with a quick click. I will often read the summary, then go on to read the whole thing. When I do, I comprehend everything much faster. Sometimes the summary is all I need.

Text to Speech

Many folks don’t realize that people with vision disabilities aren’t the only ones to use screen readers. I’m one of those people who is not blind and sometimes uses a screen reader. I have trouble noticing my mistakes when I write, but I can hear them easily. I also have much better comprehension when I listen to content or listen and read both. Hearing it read aloud smooths out the jagged edges of the detail that are hard for me to navigate, reduces cognitive load, and increases my comprehension.  The problem with traditional screen readers is that they are very difficult to use for people who don’t use them primarily. They have a ton of features, all of which require the memorization of keystrokes. They are incredible tools for folks who can see the screen, but cumbersome for the occasional user like me. Helperbird has an easy-to-access Text to Speech function that I can point right at the content I want to read, and I immediately get what I need.

Immersive Reader

So, here is the coolest thing. While in the Immersive Reader, you can click on any word and it will read just that word… if it’s a noun, it shows you a picture of that noun. If you click on the word “house,” You see a cartoon picture of a house. I’ve been learning Spanish for years. If I’m reading a website in Spanish and come across a word I don’t know, I get to hear how it’s pronounced and see a picture. What a great way to supplement my learning. A great example of an accessibility feature being a benefit outside of its intended use.

Useful Features

Let’s set aside that Helperbird is meant to be an accessibility tool. Some really cool features don’t seem to have anything to do with accessibility… they’re just cool. This, to me, really ups the value.

Speed Reading

I’ve never heard anyone who is neurodivergent say, “You know what would help me comprehend this better, something that forced me to read one word at a time really fast.” Can you imagine a WCAG success criterion that says, “6.1.1 All text content should be able to be presented one word at a time and speed up?”  Nonetheless, you can do exactly that. I’m sure there are many use cases I’m not thinking of, but certainly anyone trying to improve their reading speed will appreciate having this at their fingertips.

Notes

There are two ways to take notes in Helperbird while surfing the web. One is to use the Extract Text feature and save it as a note. This allows you to select an area of text, and Helperbird will keep that in its notes section. Fantastic for doing research and easily gathering important bits all in one place.

Then the fun begins. Sticky Notes! That’s right, you can now litter a website with sticky notes just like your desk. The cool thing about sticky notes is that they stay at the top of any page on that domain. So, you can stick a note on a website, and it will be there the next time you visit it.

Screenshot

I know there are lots of ways to take a screenshot shot but this is right there. Slide your mouse over and click. It’s just plain convenient.

Conclusion

There is so much Helperbird does that I could only scratch the surface from my perspective. I hope that this encourages you to check it out yourself. The free version is great, and at the time of writing this, the paid version is only $15 per year. The online information and support are surprisingly good and easy to find and use.

I did not do an evaluation, but at first blush, Helperbird seems to have a good focus on making their product accessible and publishes a robust accessibility statement.

At the time of writing this, I have not spoken to anyone at Helperbird. This is intentional as I want to be objective. However, I may just reach out in the future and have a fun chat with them. So, be on the lookout for a future podcast.