ConnSENSE Review: PDFAloud

PDFAloud from textHELP

PDFAloud
textHELP Systems Ltd.
Antrim, N. Ireland
http://www.texthelp.com
info@texthelp.com

Reviewed by Chauncy N. Rucker
Chauncy@connsensebulletin.com

Rating: A+

textHELP Systems is a software company from Ireland with several powerful tools to address literacy needs. You may have heard of Type & Talk, WordSmith, Read & Write, and the very powerful Read & Write Gold Edition.

At the ATIA (Assistive Technology Industry Association) Conference in Orlando this January I was shown a new textHELP product called PDFAloud. PDFAloud provides a way to have your PC or Mac read aloud a PDF file. You open a PDF in either Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free download), click anywhere on the page and your computer will read from there. PDFAloud can be set to read a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or read until you stop it. As the file is read aloud the words are highlighted in color.

textHELP intends PDFAloud particularly for individuals with learning disabilities. They don't make such claims, but I would certainly think that PDFAloud would also be helpful for individuals with low vision. Adobe Acrobat allows the text to be significantly enlarged and PDFAloud can read any size text. If in this process a word is pronounced incorrectly, you may correct the pronunciation. You can attach a pronunciation file to any Acrobat document. This would be important if you put PDF files on the web. When they are downloaded by anyone the words will be pronounced correctly. I’d suggest that if you want to compare PDFAloud to other products that might be similar, be sure to use a huge (2000 pages or so) not just a 2 page document. I’m told that PDFAloud should prove to be superior in such a comparison.

The price for PDFAloud hasn't been set yet, but will be by the time it ships in March or April. Incidentally, PDFAloud will ship with Read & Write Gold in February. Those of you who already have a copy of Read & Write Gold will be able to receive a free update from textHELP.

In addition to the above model for providing individual copies of PDFAloud, textHELP is considering a unique way to market the product for large organizations such as universities. Under this model the software itself would be free, but in order for it to work the provider of the PDF file must have "stamped" their PDF files. In order to do this the provider must purchase a Stamping Kit from textHELP.

For example, a university could put Adobe Acrobat Reader and textHELP PDFAloud on all of the university's computers. They would then use the textHELP stamping kit to stamp the PDF files on their web site. Stamping a file takes about 2 or three seconds for any size document. Then anyone using the University's computers could open any of these files and have them read by PDFAloud.

In this case the strategy of the company is to provide free to everyone the ability to read PDF files and to put the responsibility for making the information accessible on the provider of the information. Quite a different strategy from companies that produce hardware and software that they then sell to individuals so they can access information on the web.

PDF files are common on the web, but are often not easily accessible for individuals with disabilities. PDFAloud is a significant step toward solving this problem. I think PDFAloud will be a very powerful tool for struggling readers, particular for those using the web. In addition I think PDFAloud would be a valuable tool for many individuals with low vision.

Note: I wrote the above review before I could actually try out PDFAloud. When I did download a copy it installed on my Mac almost instantly with no problems. You don't really see a PDFAloud program because it's fully integrated into Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

When I opened Adobe Acrobat I noticed a few additional buttons on the toolbar. I opened a PDF file and was able to have it read to me by using the PDFAloud toolbar. It wasn't perfect, but I was pretty excited. Then I discovered the PDFAloud documentation. I often don't bother with documentation, but by reading it I discovered:

an explanation of how the toolbar functioned
a way to expand the toolbar adding three icons to select reading by word, sentence, or paragraph
how to get PDFAloud to read flow charts or maps
how to get PDFAloud to read a PDF note
how to select one of over 20 of the available voices and how to adjust the pitch, speed and volume of the voice
how to change the highlight and background colors
how to change how a word is pronounced, hear the word pronounced, and add the pronunciation you choose to the Pronunciations List (when I tried this I found it already pronounced words remarkably well e.g., PhD was read phd and Dr was read doctor)

All this from documentation that was less than 20 pages! The people at textHELP create documentation that is almost as spectacular as their software!

After reading the document and trying out all the features, I just can't praise PDFAloud enough. I love what it does and how it does it. The fact that it seamlessly becomes a part of Adobe Acrobat is remarkable. Thank you textHELP!