To read a website in your computer (blog post, news article, etc):
If you use Firefox, the built-in tool “Reader view” (you can access it pressing F9 or clicking a small Written-paper-icon at the right-most side of the url bar, left of the Bookmarking star) has an option to listen to the text. You can control the speed (up to a point, it does not allow to speed it up enough, in my view) and the voice. It is not awesome, but for the standards of the (free) text-to-speech options, I find it good and used it very often. A very useful plus of the Reader view is that it indicates the approximate time one would need to read the text.
If you use Chrome, you can download an extension called Reader View. It basically does the same than the Firefox Reader View (and it looks very similar as well, I actually believe that it is deliberate). There are other extensions offering more or less the same. I settled for this one because it also indicates the approximate time one needs to read the text.
Reading PDFs with headers/footers:
Every app I tried suck at reading PDFs with headers/footers! I have not found a way to make the reader ignore them. However, there is an hilarious workaround: open the pdf file with MS Word and use the in-built tool to read the text. It takes a while for word to open long pdfs, but Words “understands” the pdf’s headers and footers (it formats them as headers/footers in word), and the reading tool do not read them.
All these are not perfect but alright in my opinion. However, listening to (or reading+listening to) a text with too many citations is very tedious. (Free) readers do not handle them well. They read them with a very weird and slow pace.
To read a website in your computer (blog post, news article, etc):
If you use Firefox, the built-in tool “Reader view” (you can access it pressing F9 or clicking a small Written-paper-icon at the right-most side of the url bar, left of the Bookmarking star) has an option to listen to the text. You can control the speed (up to a point, it does not allow to speed it up enough, in my view) and the voice. It is not awesome, but for the standards of the (free) text-to-speech options, I find it good and used it very often. A very useful plus of the Reader view is that it indicates the approximate time one would need to read the text.
If you use Chrome, you can download an extension called Reader View. It basically does the same than the Firefox Reader View (and it looks very similar as well, I actually believe that it is deliberate). There are other extensions offering more or less the same. I settled for this one because it also indicates the approximate time one needs to read the text.
Reading PDFs with headers/footers:
Every app I tried suck at reading PDFs with headers/footers! I have not found a way to make the reader ignore them. However, there is an hilarious workaround: open the pdf file with MS Word and use the in-built tool to read the text. It takes a while for word to open long pdfs, but Words “understands” the pdf’s headers and footers (it formats them as headers/footers in word), and the reading tool do not read them.
All these are not perfect but alright in my opinion. However, listening to (or reading+listening to) a text with too many citations is very tedious. (Free) readers do not handle them well. They read them with a very weird and slow pace.