Text-to-speech tools convert digital text to audible speech.
Historically, text-to-speech tools have sounded very robotic, but more natural and realistic voices are slowly becoming more available and commonplace.
Text-to-speech is essential for people who are blind, people with low vision, and people with dyslexia, and text-to-speech can be important for people with cognitive disabilities including ADHD. Text-to-speech can also be helpful for English language learners, if you are experiencing eye strain, or when you are multitasking.
There is a huge variety of options for text-to-speech. Often, text-to-speech features are built in by default to operating systems or programs you may be using. There are also standalone apps and extensions for text-to-speech, some of which are free while others are paid.
Here we will spotlight more lightweight text-to-speech tools that work best for people with some degree of vision. If you are looking for text-to-speech solutions that work without vision, please check out Screen Readers.