The Read ‘n Style pen is the first digital pen beautifully designed to improve reading speed and comprehension, leaving a kid free to be a kid. Simply press the top mounted button and slide the device over the text. As it scans, the words will be read aloud in real time using a small, discreet Bluetooth earpiece.

Hidden Abilities, the startup company responsible for the Read 'n Style pen, is backed by the full support of  The KU Catalyst, the University of Kansas' student business accelerator. The Catalyst has been an invaluable resource for the team, providing office space, mentoring,  continuing education, professional contacts, and more.

The Read ‘n Style pen does more than just read text aloud for struggling readers, it helps kids learn to overcome obstacles on their own, boosting their self-confidence and making them more independent. Seeing the written words as they hear them pronounced has been shown to help students increase the size of their sight words, build their vocabulary, and improve their spelling.

By using the Read ‘n Style pen, your son or daughter will become more efficient, knocking out their schoolwork in a fraction of the time. And because the Read ‘n Style pen can’t store information, students can use it on tests with no risk of cheating.

The Read ‘n Style pen also helps students learn broad topics and concepts because it allows them to learn in a way that is better suited their learning style. That's important because the value of reading isn't the reading itself, but the ability to understand the information that is encoded in the text, and that's what makes the Read 'n Style pen such a powerful tool.

Anxiety free reading

Throughout a normal school day, many teachers give handouts that they expect their students to read. This can be a nightmare for those that struggle with slow reading speed. The Read ‘n Style pen can ease your student’s nerves, letting them calmly listen to the text as they follow along.

Knock out homework in minutes, not hours

An hour of homework easily turns into three for students with dyslexia. By allowing students to listen to the text as they follow along, the Read ‘n Style pen decreases homework time while increasing the amount of material students are able to digest and comprehend. 

Use the Read ‘n Style pen on tests with no risk of cheating

For many schools, the go-to “solution” for testing is to pull the student out of the classroom so the test can be read aloud without disturbing the other students. This can be humiliating for students who just want to fit in with their classmates. Because the Read ‘n Style pen can’t store information, students can use it on tests with no risk of cheating. This means your child will never again have to experience the pain and embarrassment of being pulled from the classroom.

Great for on the go students

People with dyslexia often have difficulty tracking words on the page. This problem is only made worse when you’re traveling in a vehicle. With the help of the Read ‘n Style pen, students can complete homework on the bus ride home or during a weekend trip

Put they joy back in reading

The Read ‘n Style pen brings stories to life. By reading text aloud, the Read ‘n Style pen helps struggling readers paint mental pictures, making reading enjoyable. From now on, accelerated reader points will be a breeze. 

For the millions of Americans who struggle with dyslexia, reading can be the single biggest obstacle to achievement. All too often students with dyslexia are pushed away, held back, and swept under the rug. That ends now. We’ve created the Read ‘n Style pen to give students the tools to succeed.

The idea for the Read ‘n Style pen began when Jamee was in elementary school. Like many others, she struggled with reading. When Jamee had homework, she went to her mom for help, and the two of them would sit at the kitchen table taking turns reading. Jamee would read a page out loud and her mom read the next to her. They would repeat this process back and forth until they were finished. When it was her mom’s turn to read, Jamee would follow along with her, reading the words on the page as her mom pronounced them out loud. Seeing the words, then listening to them pronounced helped Jamee understand what she was reading, improved her spelling, and built her vocabulary.

Flash forward to 2013; Jamee’s in college trying to read the “wall of text” her professor assigned. “There’s no way I’ll even be able to finish half of this!” Jamee thought to herself in frustration. “I wish there was a better way.” Suddenly, the memories of all those late nights and early mornings reading with her mom came back to her, and she thought, “What if I had a device that did just what mom had done?” Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled throughout the room. The Read ‘n Style pen was born. At least that’s how Jamee tells it.

"Proud Dyslexic" Tier

By backing our project at the “Proud Dyslexic” tier, you'll be among the first in the world to own a Read ‘n Style pen. As a reward for supporting our campaign you'll receive save $70 off the retail price. (MSRP: $396.99) By selecting this per you'll receive one Read 'n Style pen, one micro USB charger, and one set of Bluetooth earbuds.

"Proud Dyslexic Family" Tier

Dyslexia run in families so why not offer a bundle package at a special price. Back at the “Proud Dyslexic Family” tier and receive two Read ‘n Style pens, two micro USB chargers, and two sets of rechargeable Bluetooth earbuds for a combined $170 off the retail price. We'll even combine shipping.

"Honorary Dyslexic" Tier

These "Empowered By Dyslexia" T-shirts are conversation starters. Our mission, beyond the Read ‘n Style pen, is to create a change in the way society views dyslexia and to spark discussions about learning disorders in households around the world. Help us start that conversation by backing at the "Honorary Dyslexic" tier. That way you can start sporting these t-shirts, custom designed by Becky to help you spread awareness and create better public understanding.

Printed by Payden's former high school technology teacher and a group of his current students, RAIDER Ink, $1 from each transaction will go towards helping the student led charity, RAIDER relief. We'll be in touch after the campaign to get your size and color choice.

Since we began working on this three years ago, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs and false starts, but we’ve kept at it, always pushing forward. We’ve been incredibly fortunate in our pursuit of this, linking together with the just the right people at just the right time. It’s our great pleasure to introduce our team.

After more than 9 months of work, Shane completed the first working prototype of the read ‘n Style pen in April. From there we contacted several contract electronic development companies, looking for someone to help us design a custom printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) that fits our needs.

After shopping around and evaluating several different options we found a small company that has been in business since 1981, developing electronics mainly for the railroad and aviation industries. Their small size and personal feel is what attracted us to the company because they are able to give us the personalized attention we need.

We have been working with them on the Read ‘n Style pen since the middle of August and we should have an engineered prototype very soon. From there we will need to integrate the software we've been developing in house with the new PCBA, finish out the housing design, and decide on packaging. 

When all is said and done, we should be able to ship out the rewards by the end of February. But to be clear, we aren’t going to cut corners in order to meet that deadline. These things take time and sometimes stuff happens that we can’t foresee. Our promise to you is that we will make our best effort to complete the project on time so we can ship out the rewards by the end of February. If we can’t do that we'll be forward and honest about it, letting you guys know about it as soon as it becomes apparent that we won’t be able to make the deadline.

EDIT: We ran into a few issues in development that delayed the project. We've since gotten past the hurdles that slowed us down and should begin shipping orders by mid July if things continue to go as well as they have been lately. My sincerest apologies for the delay. 

We are asking for $40,000 so we can make our first production run. The money will be used to cover the one-time fixed development costs needed to produce the first unit, as well as the variable costs needed to manufacture each unit that is ordered through this campaign. For fixed costs, we will be using the capital raised for FCC certification testing, an injection mold to create the housing, transportation for our input material, a software development kit for the text-to-speech voice engine, and product liability insurance.

For variable costs, we’ll need to cover the cost of supplies and machine time for our first production run. This includes expenses like printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs), injection molded housings, royalty payments for the text-to-speech engine, earbuds, packaging, and of course taxes.

Q1:    Which languages does it read?

A1:    Right now the Read ‘n Style only reads English. We have plans to expand into other languages after we are more established, but our primary focus is getting it working in English.

Q2:    We’ve used XYZ product before and the voices are so robotic sounding. How good are your voices?

A2:    Poor voice quality is something that Jamee has complained about since she started using her accommodations and she won't let us put out a product with poor voice quality. We've spent a considerable amount of time researching and evaluating nearly a dozen different text to speech engines and we’re very confident in our choice. If you’d like to sample the voices that we intend to use, you can do so here.

Q3:    Are you at all concerned about children using this INSTEAD of reading at all, and never developing their reading skills.

A3:    That’s a really good point. By no means is this meant to be a substitute for reading, just an aid to help students get through more material. The real value in reading, to us anyway, is not the reading itself, but the exposure to the ideas and concepts encoded in the text. If our invention is able to help a person achieve that, it has served its purpose.

Q4:    My kid has XYZ syndrome, do you think this device could help them?

A4:    You know your situation better than we do, but we think the Read ‘n Style pen will be able to help people with many different conditions, not just dyslexia. As long as the person in question has enough motor control to scan a line of text and is able to understand spoken English, there is a really good chance the Read ‘n Style pen can be an incredibly valuable tool for them.

Q5:     I already have a pair of Bluetooth earbuds that I like. Am I able to use those instead?

A5:     Yes you can! The Read 'n Style pen will work with most Bluetooth earbuds currently on the market.

Q6:     What material will the Read 'n Style be able to read?

A6:     As long as the material is not handwritten and the font size is smaller than 128pt, the Read 'n Style pen should be able to read it.