Adobe Reader has a free built-in text-to-speech called Read Out Loud, but it has limitations and so we recommend you use one of the other text-to-speech programs we've shown on the website.
How do I use Read Out Loud?
To activate
- Select 'View' form the top menu.
- Click on 'Read Out Loud' and then 'Activate Read Out Loud'.
Reading out text
- Click on the 'Select Tool'
in the toolbar. - Now click on some text and it will read out that chunk of text - usually the paragraph.
Changing the voice
- Click on 'Edit' and then 'Preferences' and click on 'Reading'.
- Untick 'Use default voice', and choose a voice from the list.
- Tick 'Read form fields'.
Limitations with Read Out Loud
- You can't select the exact text that you want to read;
- Sometimes it doesn't read text at all and just says 'blank';
- It doesn't highlight the words as it reads.
You can have the page or the whole document read out, but you may find that it reads out the text on the page in a strange order, which is why the click and read method above is better for most candidates.
