Reading aloud for people who are blind or have low vision

Which tool should you use when you cannot see the screen?

A screen reader, built into your device: VoiceOver on iPhone, iPad and Mac, TalkBack on Android, Narrator on Windows, or NVDA, a free screen reader for Windows. It reads everything on the screen and lets you control the whole device, apps and websites included.

These tools are turned on in the device's accessibility settings; the exact menu names vary with the system and its version. For a blind person, they remain essential, and Readotte does not replace them.

Is Readotte a screen reader?

No. Readotte reads the document you give it (a PDF with text, an article link or pasted text), not the menus, buttons or other apps on your device.

To upload a file, choose a voice or start playback, you need to use Readotte's interface, which means seeing the screen a little or reaching it with your screen reader. We cannot promise that every element of the interface is rendered perfectly by every screen reader.

What does Readotte offer a person with low vision?

Comfortable listening for long documents: the current sentence is highlighted, so is the word being spoken, and you set the speed from 0.75× to 3×. Readotte has no text-size setting, but your browser's or system's zoom enlarges the whole page; see which listening speed to choose.

You can follow the text with your eyes when your sight allows, and just listen when it gets tired. Readotte also removes what clutters a PDF from the reading, such as repeated headers and footers, page numbers or citation marks like [12], which a screen reader often reads out; see read a PDF aloud.

How do you move through the text without a mouse?

On a keyboard, the space bar starts or pauses playback, and the left and right arrow keys move to the previous or next sentence. On a phone, you can tap a sentence to go straight to it.

Each document remembers the sentence where you stopped. With an account, you find your documents and that position on another device.

What are Readotte's accessibility limits?

Readotte has limits that are worth knowing before you rely on it. It does not read scanned PDFs (there is no text recognition), Word or EPUB files, and it reads only English and French.

Reading goes through our servers, so you need a connection, except for an MP3 downloaded with Readotte Plus. Finally, the free plan is limited to about 10 minutes of listening a day.

• Not a screen reader: it does not read menus or other apps.
• No scanned PDFs or photos of pages: no text recognition.
• No Word files, EPUB or images.
• English and French only.
• No mobile app and no browser extension.
• No text-size setting: use your browser's or system's zoom.

When is another tool a better fit?

To read a paper document or a scanned PDF, you need a tool that recognizes text in an image; some services, such as Speechify, can read a photographed page. For an accessible-format book, libraries and organizations that specialize in accessible books are often the best source.

For everything else on a device, the system's screen reader remains the reference tool. Readotte is a complement for comfortably listening to a long text; for other ways to have a document read, see how to have a PDF read aloud.