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"For any student having trouble reading material on a screen, text-to-speech technologies can be wonderful. My March 2008 post, "Converting text to and from speech for accessibility and convenience" addressed some of the software options available today for text to speech functionality. Of those, "CLiCk, Speak" is probably the main one to check out. It's cross-platform, works in the FireFox browser as a plug-in, and is free. In addition to those text-to-speech options, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system (OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard") includes the built-in ability to convert highlighted text in many applications into an audio file. Here is an example of a file I created while writing this post, of this paragraph."

HearWho.com is an online web application that turns any text into speech so you can listen to it. It will work with your internet browser. There is no software to download. you simply type or paste your text into the text area, then click "MAKE MP3 FILE". Up to 400 characters are free. A subscription is required to work with longer text. HearWho.com converts text to speech and saves it as an MP3 file so that you can listen to it on any device capable of playing MP3 files, such as Ipods, Ipads, PDAs, mobile phones, MP3 players, etc.

"ImageToText app allows you to extract editable ASCII text from images, and share the results by EMAIL or EVERNOTE. The app is free, very easy to use, and requires NO REGISTRATION. Simply take a picture of a document that you would like to extract text from, and e-mail the image to yourself, co-workers, friends. You will all receive not only the image but a text file that contains the editable text that is extracted from the image."

"Convert your phone into a mobile text scanner What the Text Fairy can do * perform OCR (optical character recognition) * Edit extracted text * copy extracted text into the clipboard for use in other apps * convert the scanned page into PDF * recognizes printed text from more than 50 languages"

"iWordQ US (English) is an easy-to-use writing and reading application to assist struggling writers and readers. In Writing mode, a simple text editor is used for writing with the support of word prediction, abbreviation-expansion and speech feedback features. Spell-check and dictionary access is included. Use speech recognition with an iPad 3. In Reading mode, text is shown in a more visually pleasing manner to improve readability. This is used for proofreading, reading to learn, silent reading, reading aloud, and casual reading/listening. A novel text chunking method (patent-pending) can be selected to enhance comprehension and readability of text to allow you to focus on one text chunk at a time"

People, particularly teenagers, have an almost compulsive reaction to open text messages when their phones beep or buzz. So if you want to quickly deliver an important message to student or parent today, sending a text message is the best way to do it. Managing a list of cell phone numbers can be a daunting task. Here are seven services that educators can use to easily send and manage group text messages.

"SpeakIt reads selected text using Text-to-Speech technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages. Usage: - First select the text you want it to read. - Then click the icon to start listening. - When it is ready to read, the number of sentences is shown on the icon. - To stop listening at any time click pause"

$99.99 "The highly anticipated KNFB Reader converts printed text into high quality speech to provide accurate, fast, and efficient access to both single and multiple page documents with the tap of a button on the iPhone. Picture accuracy is facilitated by a Field of View Report, Automatic Page Detection, and Tilt Control. Our app allows users to capture pictures of virtually any type of printed text, including mail, receipts, class handouts, memos and many other documents that you may encounter. Proprietary document analysis technology determines the words and reads them aloud to the user with high quality text-to-speech and Braille access. Individuals with print disabilities will benefit from the synchronized speech and text highlighting capabilities. KNFB Reader will revolutionize access to print materials for the mobile professional and busy student by providing advanced state of the art mobile reading technology in a single hand-held device. "

"This way you can listen to the audio while you are running, working out at the gym or commuting to work. There are many desktop software and also online tools to convert text to speech (TTS). However it is not easy to find free and good ones. Most free online text to speech conversion tools are severely limited, allowing only few hundred characters or do not give any download option. In our search for free Text To Speech Online Tools, we found five best ones which we are listing here."

"Magnify and change the color of any selected text. Use the mouse or the keyboard to move the selection around the page. This extension magnifies any selected text on a webpage. The magnified text is displayed inside of a separate lens and preserves the original page layout. You can change both the lens text color and the lens background color."

Achieve Tablet lets readers be themselves, as well as part of a crowd, with a mobile, text-to-speech device that looks great on any desk and fits in any bag. With touch-screen and gesture-based scrolling, page turning, and zooming, readers can succeed in totally new and intuitive ways. Capturing text is as easy as taking a picture with the Tablet's camera. Then reading happens with synchronized text highlighting and audio playback. With Achieve Tablet, readers can also download Achieve Software for Windows* or Mac* and turn a school or home desktop or laptop into a full-blown digital library.

"Text input via speech. Typing without a keyboard now very easy! You say - he writes! A new approach to the input texts on the computer. All you need is a microphone and the correct pronunciation. Voicenote - increasingly popular application for Google Chrome™. It allows typing on a computer, by dictating text to the microphone."

"The Lexile ® measure of text is determined using the Lexile Analyzer ®, a software program that evaluates the reading demand-or readability-of books, articles and other materials. The Lexile Analyzer ® measures the complexity of the text by breaking down the entire piece and studying its characteristics, such as sentence length and word frequency, which represent the syntactic and semantic challenges that the text presents to a reader. The outcome is the text complexity, expressed as a Lexile ® measure, along with information on the word count, mean sentence length and mean log frequency. "

"NaturalReader 12 is a text-to-speech software for Windows. This easy-to-use software with natural-sounding voices can read to you any text such as Microsoft Word files, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV."

"One of the challenges in providing students with the most significant disabilities with access to the general curriculum is finding materials that link directly to the grade level content, but are written at a level that is accessible. As part of the DLM™ project we have been building a library of companion texts that go with the exemplar texts called out in the Appendix of the Common Core State Standards. These books are accessible, open-source texts that you and your students can read online, on a reader that uses epub files, or offline as Powerpoint files or printed versions of the books. "

"For children and young people with reading difficulties, text-to-speech (TTS) software offers some of the benefits of a personal reader. The article provides an overview of the technology and its application, and then summarizes the research on benefits of TTS for struggling readers. The different kinds of TTS software available are described in three categories, according to sophistication, and information is given concerning how teachers can obtain electronic text materials for use with TTS. Finally, suggestions are provided for implementing TTS in the classroom. Related Postings from the Archives * Teachers' Use of Technology in a Reading Clinic by Ernest Balajthy et al. * Wait for Me! by Ofer Bergman * Jumping off the Page by Bart Pisha and Peggy Coyne What Is TTS? | Impact of TTS | Available Software | Available Texts | Practical Considerations | Suggestions for Use | References "

a simple tool for creating animated text displays. The animated text displays you create with Wondersay can be embedded into a blog post or wiki page. To create an animated text display just type a few words then click the Wondersay This icon. If you don't like the display that is automatically generated you can customize the colors, fonts, and animation effects until you're satisfied with the display.

"NaturalReader is a Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy to use software can convert any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or iPod."

"PDF Connoisseur does it all for you ✔ Save to PDF - converting other doc formats into PDFs ✔ PDF Page Editor - rearrange or truncate pages in PDF and save it as a new file ✔ PDF flatten - preserve all the edits and valuable information within a PDF ✔ Text-to-Speech - listen to your documents ✔ Image to text - turn your images into searchable text files with OCR recognition ✔ PDF form filling & contract signing ✔ Easy file transfer with all manner of cloud storage services, FTP, and WebDAV ✔ Highlight, annotate, and add built-in stamps to PDFs"

" TTS gives Firefox the power of speech. Select text, click the button on the bottom right of Firefox window and this add-on speaks the selected text for you. Isn't it brilliant? Audio is downloadable."