A long document on a computer may become difficult to read when this reading has to go for hours together or you may have pronunciation problems when you read. Apart from this, a person may be visually challenged and it may not be possible for him to read an essential document on a computer at all.
Instead of straining your eyes reading a document, you have a simple solution that comes in the form of Text to Speech tools. These are applications installed on the PC which can actually read out a text document on your computer in various voices, at varied speeds and at variety of pitch levels. For non-professional use, there are various freeware text to speech utilities available online today. A few have been reviewed below,
1.) iSpeech:
iSpeech is the best Text to Speech online utility that i have found ever, It allows you to convert text into natural human voices from a list of voices online and download them to your computer. They also have the facility of converting your uploaded documents into voices. The negative point in it is that a free account allows you to convert voices upto 1min only, However a paid account offers unlimited time.
But for your browser they have an extension by which you can select a particular text and read it aloud. For Chrome Download it from Here.
2.) Ultra Hal Text-to-Speech Reader:
Ultra Hal Text to Speech Reader is a freeware utility by Zabaware which includes high quality voices in which the text can be read. The main advantage of this program is that it can read text from a variety of sources like e-books, clipboard, documents as well as instant chat messages. Overall, it is a good application if you want proof reading of your documents. You can even save the speech in WAV format for listening later.
3.) Speakonia:
Speakonia by CFS-Technologies is another freeware text to speech utility. It comes with around 20 different voices with strong robotic accents with good punctuation. The program interface is clear and straightforward; you simply select text in any document and press Ctrl+C to read it aloud. You can easily change the pitch and speed of speech. It can read text from many sources like HTML text documents, clipboard contents and e-mails. But it's main drawback is that it cannot record speech for which you may require a third party software.
4.) SmartRead 0.80:
SmartRead 0.80 by SmartySoft is freeware text reading utility. It has clear voice support in english and chinese languages. It can start reading a document from any point randomly by placing cursor or mouse pointer anywhere in the document and is a quick and easy way for reading a document. If there is any problem in the speech engine then it has a special repair function that automatically corrects any problems in the same.
5.) Free NaturalReader 11:
NaturalReader is a text-to-speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy-to-use software can read to you any text such as Microsoft Word files, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV.
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