Automatik Text Reader

Transcription

If your e-text is a PDF file, you can read it out loud using Adobe Reader, which is a free download from www.adobe.com. First you locate your PDF file, right click, and Open With Adobe Reader. All of your Read Out Loud options are available under the View menu, but first we're going to go to Edit and Preferences, or on a Mac, this would be under your Adobe Reader and Preferences menu. And under categories on the left side you will see Reading, and this is where you can adjust all of your reading options. So I'm going to uncheck the default voice and speech attributes. Microsoft Mike does not work on my computer, so I'll select Microsoft Anna. You will also want to play around with the pitch, especially if the current pitch sounds too mechanical or gravelly to you. You can also adjust the speed using the words per minute here. And at the top, you'll probably want to play around with the reading order if, for whatever reason your document is reading the right side column first. So, you may also want to check the Override the reading order in tagged documents if it's not reading in the correct order. So, first you'll want to go directly to the page you want to start reading at. Since I have not clicked anywhere inside this document, when I go to the Read Out Loud menu and activate, and then go back and tell it to Read This Page Only, you'll see that it starts at the top of whichever page is selected. So if you actually wanted to start at the bottom of a page, you would have to click inside the document and select that paragraph. Now, the problem is that it will only read this paragraph, and to move on to the next paragraph you will have to click next to the next section. Another problem is that if your file is too large, it may not load. You'll see a little blue loading bar at the bottom right corner, it may crash Adobe Reader, it may not load, it may take ten minutes, at which point you'll have to close and reopen with Adobe Reader. Also, if you've clicked inside your document, you can't use the Read This Page Only or Read To the End of the Document options unless you close and reopen, and then you can use these options again. So if you actually want to read section by section, and your file is too large, you may want to check out our NaturalReader demo, and that may help you more. So, that's the basics of Adobe Reader, so just let us know if you have any questions.