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How to Have a PDF Read to You

keaboard for blind person
Photo by John Karlo Mendoza on Unsplash

Did you know you could get PDFs read to you using your Mac’s VoiceOver feature? Learn how to enable VoiceOver read a PDF on Macbook over voice.

Did you know you could get PDFs read to you?

PDFpen is equipped with Speech, a PDF accessibility feature that converts text to audio. You can use Speech to have the content of PDFs read to you out loud.

Have entire PDFs read to you

To start making use of this accessibility feature, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Edit > Speech > Start Speaking. Your Mac should begin reading the PDF aloud.
  2. To pause, choose Edit > Speech > Stop Speaking.

If you use the Speech function often, you can create a keyboard shortcut for starting/stopping text-to-speech—see Create Custom Keyboard Shortcuts in PDFpen.

Have a section of a PDF read to you

You can select a portion of the document—for example, a paragraph—to be read out loud. First, select the text, then choose Edit > Speech > Start speaking and PDFpen will read the selected area.

Why the Speech feature matters

The Speech feature was designed to increase PDF accessibility for those who are visually impaired. You don’t have to be blind to benefit from Speech, though. You can use this feature to multitask, to discover how written text sounds, or to hear the correct pronunciation in another language.