This is the fourth in a series of articles about Adobe Reader, the free software used to view and print pdf files.

In January of this year, Bonnie Brockman amazed us with her program demonstrating speech recognition software, or "speech to text". This month's article is about the reverse perspective: "text to speech", or how your computer can read out loud to you.

The latest edition of Adobe Reader (Version 6.0) has its own text to speech tool, the Read Out Loud" function. This function requires the Read Out Loud plug-in, so if you did not download the full version of the Reader, you will need to install the plug-in in order to access this function. Windows XP's text to speech engine is enabled by default; earlier versions of Windows may require some additional effort to use the plug-in.) The Read Out Loud function will read a single page, a section, or the entire pdf document to you. Simply open the pdf document, and place your cursor on the page where you would like to begin reading. Click View > Read Out Loud > Read this Page [or Section, Read to End of Document]

If you don't hear anything, make sure your speaker volume is turned up. Read Out Loud will only work for pdf's prepared from text files. It will not work for pdf's prepared from scanned documents; such pdf's are just images, and there is no text to read. Click Document > Quick Check to determine if the document is readable.

You have some control over the speed and tone of the reading. Click Edit > Preferences > Reading, and try a different voice, if available, or change the words per minute and/or tone of the voice. I have a choice of Microsoft Sam or Toshiba Male Adult on my system. I prefer the Toshiba voice; it is less robotic than Microsoft Sam. You may have different voices available on your system; there are a number of voices available from 3rd party vendors, including ones that speak with different accents or that are have certain specialty vocabularies such as medicine. There are some free voice downloads (including Microsoft Mary) available at http://www.bytecool.com/voices.htm.

Read Out Loud obviously improves the accessibility of pdf documents to readers who may be visually impaired. Even if you don't fall in that category, you may find it relaxing to hear a document without having to sit in front of your monitor to see it, or if you're the multi-tasking sort, you can accomplish something else while listening to the pdf. Read Out Loud is good, but not perfect. The voice occasionally totally misspeaks a word, and there are still many complaints about the machine-like voice quality.

I am a "skip and scan" reader, except when reading for pleasure. Most pdf's I read are user manuals or tax forms, neither of which fall in the "pleasure" class for me, so I prefer to scan those files for the information I need and get on with it. Still, it's a novelty, and worth checking out. Such technology is here to stay and will continue to improve.

[Next month: E-books and Adobe Reader]