Did you know that your computer, laptop or tablet likely has built-in text to speech that you can use right away?

Most devices now have accessibility settings that can be enabled. Many devices have powerful text to speech options included in their operating systems or settings. They are not necessarily as diverse as the assistive technology suites that are available with multiple options, however, they can very useful if you simply need text to speech without all of the “extras!”

Here are a few options, with visuals:

Using text to speech in Microsoft Word on a PC (desktop version)-It takes a few minutes to enable this setting in Word, but once enabled, its an excellent option!

Using text to speech on an iPad-this is a Google Slides presentation that demonstrates all of the accessible features on an iPad.

Using text to speech on a Mac– Apple products and Macs especially have excellent built-in TTS and powerful accessibility features in general. See this link for more information on Macs and accessibility features.