Read a PDF with Read Out Loud

I had heard that you could have Adobe Reader read a PDF to you, but I had not tried it until today.  The Read Out Loud feature reads aloud the text in a PDF document, including the text in comments and alternate text descriptions for images and fillable fields.  It uses the available voices installed on your system.  These voices may have been installed from text-to-speech or language applications, and you can choose them to read your PDFs by going to Edit>>Preferences.  Here you can stick with the default voice, or pick one of remaining voices.  You can also control pitch and speed settings directly below the voice choice.  This article published online by Adobe takes you through the steps.  After activating Read Out Loud, don't forget to go back to the View menu and click on Read Out Loud again, and choose whether you want it to read the entire document, or just the rest of the text left on the page. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 29, 2011 at 7:39 PM

    i have a default voice on my computer
    ( i checked ) but when i hit "activate Read out loud" its says"no US voice for this system" ....any help

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousAugust 16, 2012 at 8:48 AM

    I purchased an ebook in pdf format but dont know how to read it aloud on ipad...any advice for me???

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark ReppAugust 16, 2012 at 12:11 PM

      I see two ways to do this on the iPad:

      1) Activate the built-in VoiceOver feature by going to Settings>>General>>Accessibility>>VoiceOver. Turn it On. This affects everything on your iPad though, not just the PDFs. You can vary the speaking rate in the settings. All icons will now need to be double-clicked with VoiceOver turned on, but your eBooks (in the iBooks app or anywhere else) can all be read aloud this way.

      2) If the first method is too awkward, try purchasing this $4.99 app called vBookz PDF Voice Reader U.S: http://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id497274026?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
      --It works well, although it is not free and it features a very robotic voice that may be hard to follow.

      Delete

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