Read Aloud in Edge and Other Immersive Reader Uses

Yesterday morning I published a blog post about using the Read Aloud Chrome extension. In the introduction to that post I mentioned that I usually recommend using Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge if you need to regularly have webpages read aloud. A reader emailed me this morning to ask why I prefer Immersive Reader. Here's the short explanation that I gave. 

Immersive Reader in Edge lets users pick the voice in which pages are read aloud, lets users chose the speed at which pages are read aloud, and it lets users adjust the size and spacing of the font that is displayed while pages are read aloud. There are some additional features that are also helpful in some situations. For example, you can have parts of speech highlighted by Edge. In this short video I provide a demonstration of using Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge. 

Here are a few more ways to use Immersive Reader.

How to Highlight, Annotate, and Share Pages in Microsoft Edge



How to Have PDFs Read Aloud by Using Microsoft Edge



How to Use Immersive Reader in Microsoft Forms

Read Aloud in Chrome

My usual recommendation for teachers and students who need webpages read aloud is to use Immersive Reader which is built into Microsoft Edge. But if Edge isn't available to you then you might want to try the Read Aloud extension for Chrome. The Read Aloud extension does exactly what its name implies, it reads pages aloud. 

The Read Aloud extension doesn't offer nearly as many options as Immersive Reader in Edge offers, but there are a few customizations that you can make to it. You can adjust the speed at which pages are read, the size of the text as it's displayed when being read aloud, and you can change the size of the text box that is displayed when a page is read aloud. 

Watch this one-minute video to see how Read Aloud for Chrome works. 

Book Creator Now Offers "Read To Me" Mode Online

Last summer the Book Creator team launched a web-based version of their popular iPad app. The web-based version, called Book Creator for Chrome, has been a hit with teachers and students.

The latest update to Book Creator for Chrome includes a feature called "Read To Me." Read To Me is a text-to-speech function that reads the words on the pages of any book created in Book Creator. Read To Me highlights each word as it is read aloud. The pages of the books automatically turn when the end of a page is read aloud.

Read To Me works in Chrome, Safari, and Edge. It also works within the iPad app.

Book Creator's Read To Me includes the option to change the speed at which the text is read aloud. You can also specify whether or not words are highlighted and whether or not multimedia elements are played within the book when Read To Me is enabled.