Text to Speech for Accessibility

1. 01

   Paste your text

   Paste up to 5,000 characters from PDFs, articles, study notes or emails in one go. No file upload needed.

2. 02

   Pick a clear voice

   Sarah, Nicole, Kore or Michael for high intelligibility. They're easier on the ears for long-form listening.

3. 03

   Set a comfortable speed

   Start at 0.85× for comprehension. Experienced TTS listeners often settle at 1.2–1.5× for familiar material.

4. 04

   Download for offline listening

   Save the WAV and copy it to your phone for commutes – you don't need to be online to listen.

Want to hear them? Browse all 54 voices →

• 01

  Adjust playback speed to suit the task

  For comprehension-heavy material, or if you're new to text-to-speech, start at 0.85–0.9x; the slower pace gives your brain time to process. Power users working with familiar material often run 1.5–2x for catch-up reading. The right speed depends on the task, not the user: the same person might choose 0.9x for a textbook and 1.6x for a news article.

• 02

  Create audio versions of important documents in advance

  Generate a WAV of any document you expect to return to: meeting notes, a course reading, an immigration form, a healthcare letter. Save it in a clearly named folder, so the audio companion is one tap away next time you need to review the content without re-reading.

• 03

  Embed audio companions in PDFs and pages

  For accessible publishing, put the WAV (or a 192 kbps MP3 encoded from it) alongside the document, or link to it from the page. That gives you an audio companion track that supplements – but never replaces – proper structural markup, alt text and headings. WCAG treats audio as an enhancement; the document itself still needs an accessible structure.

• 04

  Treat audio as a supplement, not a substitute

  Under WCAG 2.2, audio can't replace alt text on images, accessible names on controls, semantic headings, or a proper reading order. A TTS file is an additional way to access the content. Build the page accessibly first, then add the audio companion for people who prefer, or need, to listen.

• 05

  Control pronunciation with punctuation

  Commas add a short pause. Full stops reset intonation. Em dashes – like this – give a longer pause. For tricky names or technical terms, spell phonetically (for example, "Sjogren" as "show-grenz") in a separate draft for the audio version. The original written document stays correct; the TTS-only draft handles the spoken edge cases.

• 06

  Switch language for bilingual content

  For documents that mix English with Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, or Portuguese, generate each passage with a native voice from that language, then join the clips together. This sounds far more natural than forcing a single English voice through non-English text, and it supports learners who actively want to hear correct native pronunciation.

Screen readers and TTS file generators serve different needs. If you need real-time interface narration to navigate an OS, a screen reader is the correct tool. If you need a portable audio file from a document, FreeTextoSpeech fills the gap.