From text to talk - boosting reading achievement the Web way

An ongoing challenge for educators is meeting the needs of challenged readers. Now Gale brings an effective and engaging new resource to K-12 classrooms and media centers.

ReadSpeaker allows students, faculty and parents to listen to the text of any Gale K-12 online resource quickly and easily. Its advanced technology helps heighten comprehension to persons who have difficulty reading, such as people with dyslexia; people with impaired vision; and people who use English as a second language.

How it works

• When student or faculty activates ReadSpeaker by clicking the appropriate button—which is on every Web page within our products—the Web page or a selected part of text can be heard.
• Pressing the button activates the software on the ReadSpeaker server, which converts the text into spoken words.
• These words are then transferred to the computer of the user in mp3 or wav format. The Flash player on the computer is activated and starts reading the selected text.

ReadSpeaker is featured on these Gale products:

• Student Resource Center: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Junior, College Edition, College Edition Expanded, Health
• Discovering Collection
• Junior Reference Collection
• Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center
• Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center: Critical Thinking
• Kids InfoBits

ReadSpeaker benefits:

• ReadSpeaker reads site text aloud in a fast and easy way
• User decides what content is read by "highlighting" text
• User has choice of several languages
• User can change and save the standard settings of the webpage to specific preferences, such as size, graphic design, character type and color and background
• Do not need to own text-to-speech software to use ReadSpeaker
• Works on most computers
• Works on most Internet browsers

ReadSpeaker is perfect for:

• People with dyslexia
• People with impaired or limited vision
• People with English as a second language
• Children
• E-learners
• Students who rather listen than read

ReadSpeaker requirements:

• Adobe Flash Player. Download the Flash Player here (Windows) or here (Mac)
• Web browser, soundcard and speakers/headphones

ReadSpeaker does not support Flash pages and Acrobat-PDF documents.