High quality text-to-speech and screen reader technologies are available for mobile devices and computers. Check out some of the resources listed below. Please note that the extensions and apps listed are not provided by SDRC.
An asterisk (*) denotes that it is both an extension and app.
JAWS (Job Access With Speech) is the world’s most popular screen reader, developed for computer users whose vision loss prevents them from seeing screen content or navigating with a mouse.
Features include: reads aloud content on the screen (e.g, documents. emails, websites) and what item currently contains focus, such as a button, menu item, and form field, on the computer screen
Note: SDRC provides access to JAWS in computer lab and on alternative testing suite computers.
KNFB Reader is an award-winning mobile app for blind, low-vision, dyslexic, and other print-disabled users that converts text to speech or text to Braille. Available on Android, iOS, and Windows 10.
Features include: take a picture of the text, and select to listen aloud, or turn it into braille. Takes pictures of text as you turn the page. Also does not rely on Wi-Fi, makes it faster than other apps.
NVDA allows people that are blind and vision impaired to access and interact with Windows OS.
Features include: free software to install and use on personal device, intuitive and comfortable experience, available in multiple languages.
Balabolka is a free text-to-speech engine that boasts quality and flexibility. It gets your text converted to audio and can be used in any of the e-Learning applications. Available on Chrome, Apple and Android.
Features include: voice parameters, save as audio files, global hotkeys, extract text from documents. Can save synchronized text in external files.
Capti can improve students' reading with evidence-based solutions including a Science of Reading based diagnostic assessment.
Features include: Dictionary, can make playlists, hands-free and hands-on, artificial intelligence, extract main article content from a web page, upload any popular document type, multi-lingual, can be used on the go.
OrbitNote allows you to make digital documents accessible and actionable, while demonstrating and giving feedback in multiple formats. It’s a great tool to boost productivity, connections and collaboration!
Features include: collaborate in real-time within digital documents, read text, including math & science equations, aloud with easy-to-follow dual color highlighting, use freehand or shape drawing to scribble and draw on your digital documents
Read Aloud uses text-to-speech (TTS) technology to convert webpage text to audio. It works on a variety of websites, including news sites, blogs, fan fiction, publications, textbooks, school and class websites, and online university course materials.
Features include: select from a variety of text-to-speech voices, including those provided natively by the browser, as well as by text-to-speech cloud service providers such as Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson, and Microsoft, can read PDF, Google Docs, Google Play books, Amazon Kindle, and EPUB
Speechify is a Chrome extension and Apple app that reads aloud text.
Features include: listen to Gmail, Google Docs, PDFs, listen at up to 9x the average reading speed and in over 20 different languages, save content to your library from your desktop or your phone and listen to it all anytime, anywhere.
Voice Dream Reader lets you listen to any document and ebook using text-to-speech.
Features include: 36 built-in iOS voices in 27 languages are also available for free, scan paper documents with the camera for text-to-speech, optimized for VoiceOver, Braille and switch control.
Read&Write for iPad is a powerful keyboard replacement that works in every app. Supporting reading, writing, comprehension and vocabulary development, Read&Write provides a rich set of features which extend accessibility and provide a range of tools to help with literacy. Also offers a Chrome extension.
Features include: easy to understand dictionary, providing not just definitions, but contextual sentences as well, includes Safari toolbar
Simple Text Reader reads out loud written content, plain text, files and web pages.
Features include: Editable text, Import web pages, Internal browser to search and play web pages.
NaturalReader is a downloadable text-to-speech desktop software for personal use. This easy-to-use software with natural-sounding voices can read to you any text such as Microsoft Word files, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails.
Features include: high quality, crystal-clear reading, read from scanned documents or images, listen to past uploads or convert to mp3.