When one clicks on the play button, NaturalReader will read the selected text aloud. The user then must select text to be read aloud by dragging the cursor over it. When a user clicks on the “Floating Bar” button seen in the bottom right of the above image, the app shrinks down to a bar that hovers over whatever window is open on the screen. One may buy additional voices separately, or spring for one of the paid versions with other additional features.Īs seen in the image above, the speech output syncs with highlighting on the screen. The user may easily adjust the speed without leaving the main interface. The free version picks up whatever voices are already on your computer. Users may then click the play button to begin reading wherever they wish. The files are displayed as text only, so all images are stripped out and much of the formatting is lost.
The traditional interface can open RTF, Text, PDF, Word, or ePub files. The other is a traditional app that opens up documents to be read aloud.
One, the Floating Bar, hovers over whatever window is open on the screen. We don’t have access to an Android device to test that app, but student reports indicate that it is similar to the iOS app in design, strengths, and weaknesses. And since OSX has its own text-to-speech capabilities built into it, there’s not as much of a need for it on that platform. I’ve found that the Mac app has not been updated as regularly as the PC app and doesn’t work quite as well. This post will focus on the PC and iOS apps, as those are the ones that we’ve worked with the most. But in recent years, NaturalReader apps have become available for Mac, iOS, and Android as well. Students with PCs have found it especially useful, as Windows does not have a user-friendly text-to-speech tool built into it like that found in Mac OSX. NaturalReader has been one of our most popular free apps for students with dyslexia for years.
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