Text to speech for dyslexia: hear the words as you see them

Why does reading take so much energy with dyslexia, and what does reading aloud change?

With dyslexia a large part of your attention goes to decoding the letters, and less is left for what the text says. When you hear the words while you see them, the voice does the decoding and you can stay with the meaning.

It is not about reading faster, and it is not a treatment: Speakybara does not diagnose anything and does not teach reading. It reads aloud what you point it at, and for many people with dyslexia that makes a long text a lot less heavy.

It runs from the tray and shows nothing until you ask it to, so in a classroom or an office nobody notices it.

• The thirty-page PDF for tomorrow
• The email you have started three times
• The subtitle that is already gone, or the text inside a picture

How do you get Speakybara to read a text aloud?

Press the hotkey and drag a frame around the text, in any program. Let go of the mouse and it starts reading straight away; there is nothing to select or copy first.

Speakybara is a free Windows app that turns any part of your screen into text you can listen to or copy. It reads the screen, not the program, so it also works where copying cannot: a scanned PDF with no text layer, a photo of a page, an image in an email, a paused video.

Text you have already copied is read with one other hotkey, without pasting.

• One hotkey: frame the text, and it reads
• Works on scanned PDFs, photos and screenshots
• Reads copied text without pasting it anywhere

How do you follow along while it reads?

The read-along window highlights the sentence being spoken and the words turn white as they are said. On the screen itself a yellow highlight moves over the part you framed, even when you scroll.

That keeps eye and ear on the same word. Lose the thread and you click a sentence in the read-along window, or a highlighted word on your screen, and reading continues from there. With the previous-sentence, next-sentence and ten-seconds-back buttons you can hear a passage as often as you like.

• The sentence highlighted, the words turning white as they are spoken
• A yellow highlight on the screen itself, scrolling with you
• Click a sentence or a word to continue from there
• Previous sentence, next sentence, ten seconds back

Can you change the pace and what you see?

Yes. Speed runs from 0.8x to 1.75x and a change takes effect straight away, even mid-sentence. You choose how much you see: the full window, a compact window, a subtitle bar or audio only.

A dense paragraph goes on 0.8x; a familiar text on 1.5x. The subtitle bar shows one line along the edge of your screen, in a font size you set yourself. If you only want to listen, nothing is shown at all.

• Full window with the sentence highlighted
• Compact window in a corner
• Subtitle bar, with an adjustable font size
• Audio only

Can it make a difficult text simpler?

Yes. Frame the text and choose explain or summarise. You get the simpler version or the short version, read aloud the same way.

Explain rewrites a dense paragraph in plainer words. Summarise gives you the gist of a long piece before you read all of it. Translate and improve writing sit in the same menu, useful when you write something back.

These run on your own AI key, or on a local model you install yourself, such as LM Studio or Ollama. None of it is needed to have text read aloud.

• Explain — plainer words for a dense paragraph
• Summarise — the gist before you read the rest
• Your own key, or a local model on your own PC

Is this a dyslexia suite, or a medical tool?

Neither. Speakybara is a read-aloud tool: it reads the piece of screen you point it at, on request. It does not diagnose, does not treat and does not replace reading support.

If you need more than reading aloud — spelling help, word prediction, study tools, a complete literacy suite — Kurzweil, Read&Write and ClaroRead do more than Speakybara. Speakybara is the small, free tool for that one moment: this piece of text, now, read aloud.

NVDA and Windows Narrator drive the whole of Windows by voice, for people who are blind. Speakybara sits next to them, not instead of them.

• No diagnosis, no treatment claim
• A companion to a dyslexia suite, not a replacement
• If your school or employer can fund assistive tools, it is worth asking

Where does my text go, and what does it cost?

Recognition happens on your own PC, and Speakybara is free to download and use. Only if you pick an online voice do the sentences leave your machine, and the image never does.

Speakybara never sends your screen anywhere. The capture is recognised by the text recognition already built into Windows, on your own PC. Choose an online voice and only the sentences go to Microsoft or Google to be spoken. The image never does. The local voice (Piper) works fully offline.

Speakybara does keep a list of what you have read, as text, on your own PC, with a small preview image of each capture, so you can find a passage again later. You can switch the history off at Settings › General, and the preview image off on its own.

Free means the local Piper voices out of the box, the free Microsoft voices, or Google's voices with your own key. Speakybara Managed is the same app for a yearly fee: we run the Google voices for you, so there is no Google Cloud project or billing to set up yourself. Nothing is locked or watermarked in the free version.

• Free — local Piper voices, offline, no account
• Free — Google or Microsoft voices with your own key
• Speakybara Managed — we run the Google voices for you