ReadAloud

Convert text to audio file and listen on the go（ PDF, textbook，website，ePub+)

What is ReadAloud?

ReadAloud is a simple but sophisticated app which can take any text of your choice: websites, emails, ebooks, PDFs, Word documents…. And read it aloud to you.

You can choose from nearly 70 virtual actors, speaking a range of languages and accents. There are male and female voices, old and young, cheerful and serious, so you can match the audio to the material.

With ReadAloud, you can read anything anywhere. You can check your emails on the way to work, study in the gym, listen to the Bible while doing household chores.

If the text you need to read is a hard copy, not a digital file, that’s no problem too: just photograph the page, and ReadAloud will scan and read the image. You can even speed up or slow down the reading, to suit your own pace.

What can ReadAloud read?

ReadAloud can handle almost any text, in a wide range of formats. It can read aloud in 21 languages, from Arabic to Welsh. ReadAloud can also speak in different accents, such as Australian English or Mexican Spanish.

The home screen offers two options: Library or Browser. The Browser can read any website you point it to, in one of the many supported languages. To get you started, the app offers a range of news and magazine sites, including the BBC, NY Times, and Wikipedia.

These recommended sites will keep you up to date with what’s happening in the world. But of course you can add your own Favorites, creating a unique personalized menu which reflects your interests.

The Browser page also includes a search bar to find the content of your choice, and will remember your search history so you can find that fascinating story when you want to listen again.

The Library is where you find your books and documents. You can easily upload text in a number of common formats, including .txt, Rich Text Format, Word documents and PDFs.

ReadAloud will also read images of text. If you don’t have a scanner, you can simply take a picture of the page with your phone’s camera, and ReadAloud will read it aloud for you!

Turn ebooks into audiobooks

Audiobooks are increasingly popular, as a way of enjoying a good book anytime, anywhere. But what if the book you want to listen to isn’t available on Audible? No problem if you have ReadAloud. Just upload any ebook fom your Kindle or iPad to the text to speech app, and it instantly becomes an audiobook!

Save money too- instead of paying $20 for an audiobook, or $15 for an Audible subscription, borrow ebooks from Hoopla or ZLibrary, or get free stories from Wattpad, iReader, or Goodreads, and convert them to audio.

Who might use ReadAloud?

• A commuter connecting to CarPlay to listen to the news on the way to work

• A teacher helping her students learn to read

• An avid reader listening to their favorite book while doing housework

• A creator of podcasts uploading their script to convert it to narration

• A student revising text books at the gym, learning as they work out

How does it work?

ReadAloud uses Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology. TTS is a rapidly developing area of artificial intelligence which uses software to analyze text and convert it to human-sounding speech.

Most people will be familiar with TTS voices from Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. Alexa can be found on Amazon’s Echo smart speakers, while Siri is available on a range of Apple products, from iPads to Apple Watches.

Another popular application for this technology was Narrator’s Voice, which allowed users to brighten up their messages by having them read aloud by virtual voices. Users could also apply a range of fun effects.

The flipside of text-to-speech technology is audio-to-text (ATT), which takes audio files and converts them to documents. The leading ATT converter is Transcribe, although it’s still a developing technology.

ReadAloud represents the next generation of test to speech apps, allowing the user to listen to entire books and webpages instead of just short messages.