Free Programs for Reading

The following applications and basic directions are available on a CD in the Disability Services Office:

NaturalReader is a program that you copy and paste text into to read the text back or use to read inside of word processors or Internet Explorer. Text opened in the program works like a media player with play, pause, stop, forward, and rewind buttons. You can read inside of another program by holding down CTRL and pressing F9. It will read what is highlighted or all of the text. . The program can also be used to create MP3’s of the text opened in NaturalReader. This application is free to use. There are other low cost versions of the NaturalReader program with better voices and more features. This program works in all versions of Windows XP, Vista, and 7.

WordTalk is a free program that works in MS Word versions 97 through 2007 on computers running Windows versions up through Vista and the 32-bit version of 7. It reads word by word, Sentence by Sentence, or paragraph by Paragraph. It also has a talking spelling dictionary.

VoiceOver and Text to Speech are programs for the Macintosh OS X that work fairly effectively. VoiceOver is a full function screen reader. Text to Speech only reads what is selected. They are both free with the operating system.

Narrator is Windows LITE VERSION of a screen reader. Narrator, in Windows Vista and 7, can read in Notepad or WordPad.

AMIS is a free DAISY Reader. It will play DAISY Audio books and display DAISY text files. It doesn’t have a text to speech engine for reading DAISY text so you will need to read DAISY text with another text to speech application.