If you want to listen to a webpage rather than reading it, you can. How you do this depends on what device you are using:
Apple iphones or ipads have many useful features, two very neat accessibility features are Speak Screen and Speak Selection, which let you hear your device read text to you.
Speak Screen and Speak Selection both work with Kindle books, web pages, and any other text you want to listen to instead of read. Speak Screen lets you hear all of what's on your screen, and Speak Selection lets you listen to text that you have specifically highlighted on your screen.
Here's how tit works.
- Open the Settings app.
- Tap on General.
- Tap on Accessibility.
- Tap on Speech.
- Tap on Speak Selection to enable it.
- Tap on Speak Screen to enable it.
- Tap on Voices.
- Tap on English.
- Tap on the voice you want to use. Note that Alex requires an 869 MB download in order to use it.
Once the features are enabled, you can activate by tapping on the reader view icon, which looks like this:
Swipe down from the top of the screen with two fingers to have Safari start reading aloud.
You'll be able to fast forward and rewind, pause, or change the reading speed from the mobile browser's onscreen controls.
You will need to download and install an app from the Google App Store, which is here https://play.google.com.
If you go to the store and search for "read webpages", you will see there are several apps to choose from. I selected @Voice Aloud Reader. Here's a link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hyperionics.avar
Once the app is installed it is very easy to use, there is a help page here: http://www.hyperionics.com/atVoice/manual.html
There are a few extensions available, the best one I found was this one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-aloud/
Once you have installed it you can use it to read the whole page or you can highlight text then right click and select "read aloud selected text".
The voice sounds robotic, but it was the best available.
Microsoft Edge has a built-in feature that allows it to read a page’s content to users in a variety of languages.
To get the browser to read a web page, simply highlight the chosen text, right-click on the mouse, and click on Read aloud. Alternatively, users can also highlight the text and then choose the Read aloud option from the main Edge menu in the top-right corner of the app.
To have the entire web page’s content read to you, simply select Read aloud without highlighting anything.
Once the feature is activated, a special toolbar will drop down from the top of the open browser tab. The narration can be paused from this menu and, by clicking on the person icon, the reading speed can be adjusted and the voice itself can be changed.
There are a few extensions available, the best one I found was this one: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simple-text-to-speech/ghlkijaiidmimbolhoipnelekfidnpoi?utm_source=infinity
Once you have installed it you can highlight text then right click and select "Speak selection".
This app is more basic than the others, but the voice is very good.
Safari can read a webpage aloud to you.
Follow the steps below to get Safari to read to you on your Mac or iPad.
- Tap the Reader View icon in the browser bar. It looks like this:
- Go to Edit > Speech > Start Speaking.
Safari will immediately start reading the content on the webpage. Unfortunately, there's no pause or speed controls available directly in Safari. However, you can customize the voice and speaking rate in the System Preferences app. Go to System Preferences > Dictation & Speech > Text to Speech to customize the voice you hear.