Text to Speech for Accessibility

1. 01

   Paste your text

   PDFs, articles, study notes, emails, paste up to 5,000 characters per generation (10,000 signed in). No file upload needed.

2. 02

   Pick a clear voice

   Sarah, Nicole, Kore, or Michael for high intelligibility. Easier on 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 MP3 and copy to your phone for commutes, no need to be online when you read.

• 01

  Keep the text on screen while it plays

  Generate the audio and leave the reading view open under the player. The section being read is highlighted, so when your mind drifts you can find your place by looking for the highlight instead of starting the page again.

• 02

  Feed it smaller pieces

  The workspace splits your text at blank lines, but it packs short paragraphs together into sections of up to about 3,800 characters. For a long article, paste one heading and the text under it, listen, then paste the next. A five-minute clip is easier to finish than a forty-minute one, and you can untick any section you want to skip.

• 03

  Find the speed that holds you

  The speed slider runs from 0.5× to 2×. Some people drift less when the voice is a little faster than their comfortable pace; others need it slower for hard material. Generate the same paragraph at 1× and 1.3× and keep whichever one you can follow without rewinding.

• 04

  Cut down what is on screen

  Under Reading display, raise the text size, add line spacing, and try the dark or warm paper theme. Fewer lines in view means less to scan past when you look back for the highlight.

• 05

  Go one sentence at a time when a page is too much

  Text Reader Online shows a single sentence, marks the current word in browsers that support it, and has Previous and Next buttons. It uses your browser's own voices, so nothing is generated or counted, and it remembers where you stopped.

• 06

  Take the audio with you

  If you think better while moving, download the MP3 and listen on a walk or while doing something with your hands. Keep the original open on your phone so you can check a word or a number later.

Want to hear them? Browse all 54 voices →

• 01

  Tune playback speed to the task

  For comprehension-heavy material or new TTS users, start at 0.85–0.9x, slower delivery gives the brain time to process. Power users on familiar material often run 1.5–2x for catch-up reading. The right speed is task-dependent, not user-dependent; the same person may want 0.9x for a textbook and 1.6x for a news article.

• 02

  Pre-render important documents into audio

  Generate an MP3 of any document you expect to revisit, 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 the next time you need to review the content without re-reading.

• 03

  Embed audio companions in PDFs and pages

  For accessible publishing, attach the WAV (or a 192 kbps MP3 you encode from it) alongside the document, or link it from the page. This creates an audio companion track that supplements, never replaces, proper structural markup, alt text, and headings. WCAG treats audio as an enhancement; the underlying document still needs accessible structure.

• 04

  Treat audio as a supplement, not a substitute

  Under WCAG 2.2, audio cannot replace alt text on images, accessible names on controls, semantic headings, or proper reading order. A TTS file is a supplemental modality. Build the page accessibly first, then add the audio companion for users who prefer or need to listen.

• 05

  Control pronunciation with punctuation

  Commas insert short pauses. Periods reset intonation. Em-dashes, like this, produce a longer pause. For tricky names or technical terms, spell phonetically (e.g., "Sjogren" as "show-grenz") in a parallel 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, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, or Mandarin Chinese, generate each language passage with a native voice from that locale and concatenate. This sounds far more natural than forcing a single English voice through non-English text, and 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 fits the gap.