I've been keynoting and speaking at EdTech conferences across the country for years. I thought I knew Mote. I'd used the voice comments in Google Docs and loved them. But when I sat down to do a deep dive for a live webinar, I realised I'd barely scratched the surface. Here are the five features that genuinely surprised me.

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1. Read Aloud

The moment Mote started reading a Google Doc aloud, I had to stop and say something. The voice quality is remarkable. It actually sounds like a real person. You get dozens of voices to choose from across multiple languages, plus English with accents. You can speed it up, slow it down, and switch voices on the fly. For students who need to hear content read to them, this changes everything.

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2. Text-to-Speech and Translation in Google Forms

This one got me. When you create a Google Form with Mote enabled, every question gets a little speaker icon. Students can hear the questions read aloud or even click and hold to translate them into any of 60+ languages. I picked Mongolian just to test it. Instant translation, instant read aloud. For ELL students, this removes a massive barrier, and it takes zero teacher prep.

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3. Speech-to-Text

My friend Britt Horn, an instructional technologist who uses Mote daily in classrooms, shared something that stuck with everyone on the call. She talked about students who struggled to get words on paper — until they could speak them instead. "There have been tears," she said, "because there have been students that can't get words on a paper, but when they can speak it, it's just a game changer." Students voice their ideas in, then use Read Aloud to listen back and self-edit. That's a genuine writing workflow.

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4. Highlighting

Britt lit up again here. Unlike tools that need a teacher-built assignment, Mote's highlighter sits in the student's Sidebar — ready to use on any webpage, in any class. Students can colour-code for questions, main ideas, and vocabulary, then export everything to a Google Doc. One teacher models it, and the student carries that skill everywhere. That's accessibility at their fingertips.

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5. Screen Mask

This one's personal. I live with dyslexia and binocular vision dysfunction, so visual overcrowding on screen is a real challenge for me. Screen Mask dims everything except the section you're focused on. It just calms things down. I use it on days when my head's not cooperating, and honestly, I think every student could benefit from it — not just those with diagnosed needs.

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If you haven't explored Mote's sidebar yet, I'd encourage you to give it a try. I went in expecting to demo a Chrome extension — and came out realising it's a full accessibility and literacy toolkit that's been hiding in plain sight.