If you find it hard to read text on your computer, or would like to have text from a document or website read out loud to you, there are programs you can install that will read almost any text on your screen. There are many programs available, and in this article, we introduce one to you.
Professionals are recorded reading out different scripts, such as poetry, news, books and technical writing, which contain a wide variety of sounds and expressions in the language they are recording. The recordings are cut up into individual words, sounds and sentences and the program matches up words on your screen with these dissected recordings, and reads the sentences out to you.
Go to www.naturalreaders.com and click on the “Windows free download” button. Save the file to your computer and once downloaded, go to the folder in which it is saved and double click it to install it. The installation window will open. Follow the steps on the screen to complete the installation.
To use the reader press the Windows key on your keyboard and type “Natural”. The NaturalReader program should appear in the search results. Click it to open the program, click the “Floating Bar” button in the bottom right hand corner and tick the “Don’t show this dialogue” check box. Then click the “Done” button.
A small tool bar will now appear on your screen. Open something you would like to listen to, such as an email, a PDF file, an Excel file or even a website. Select the text you wish to hear read out and click the green play button on the NaturalReader floating bar. The program should now read the text out to you.
If desired click the little cog on the tool bar to select your preferred voice form the three available and also adjust rate of speech by moving the slider left or right.
