Outlook’s Immersive Reader option lets
you listen to emails rather than read them
Install Checker Plus for Gmail to play your
messages without opening your inboxFirefo x has a Narrate option inits reader
view thatconverts online text into speechUntil Chrome adds its own reader mode,
you can use the Read Aloud extension50 29 May - 11 June 201 9
Hear your emails read
aloud to you
There are lots of goodreasons
to listen to an email rather than read it,
from weary eyes to multitasking to the
message being too long to maintain
your interest. Microsoft thoughtfully
provides a tool in both the desktop
and webmail versions of Outlook that
lets you hearthe text of any email read
out loud. It’s called Immersive Reader
and you can activate it by clicking the
thre e-dot ‘More actions’menuin the
top-right corner of an email and
choosing ‘Show in immersive reader’.
This opens the message in plai n-text
format with a Play button below it.
Click this and Outlook will read the
whole email to you, or click a word in
the message to hearit read from that
point onwards. You can even adjust
the gender and speed of the voice by
clicking ‘Voice options’next to the
Play button and setting your
preferences.
Although Gmail doesn’ t offer a built-in
tool for reading messages aloud, a
Chrome extension called Checker Plus
for Gmail (bit.ly/checker476) adds the
feat ure to the webmail service. It works
by displaying notifications when you
receive new emails, and lets you hear
them without needing to open your
inbox. Click the thre e-dot menuin the
top-right corner of a message and
choose ‘Hear email’ to play the content
out loud, albeit in a ro botic voice.Make your browser
readpages to you
Just asaudiobooks let you
enjoy a goodstor y without having to
focus your eyes on a page, allowing
you to get on with other things at the
sametime, making your browser read
web content aloud can prove similarly
liberating. Firefox and Edge both offer
this useful option through their ‘reader
modes’. Open an online article and clickStaring at a screen for hours can
strain your eyes, so why not listen
to online content rather than read it?
Robert Ir vinerounds up the be st
free text-to-speech tools
the book icon at the far end of the
address bar to switch to readerview
(called ‘readingview’ in Edge).
In Firefox, click the Narrate
soundwave icon in the left-hand toolba r
and set your preferred reading speed
using the slid er – from tortoise(slow) to
hare (fast). You can also choose from
thre e voice options. Click the Play
button, then sit back and listen, using
the rewind and fast-forwardbuttons to
skipback and forth as required.
In Edge, click the thre e-dot menu
button and select ‘Read aloud’, then use
the voice controls in the top-right
corner to set your reading preferences.
Google plansto add a reader modeto
Chrome later this year – in fact, it’s
already available in the browser’s
Canary developers’ build. In the
meantime, however, you can use the
text-to-speech extension Read Aloud
(bit.ly/read476). Just click its toolbar
button and Read Aloud will ‘play’ the
current page, or you can highlight a
section of text to limit the narration to
that specific se ction.
The add-on’s Options let you change
the reading pitch, speed and default
voice, and set up keyboard shortcuts to
activate and control Read Aloud.Hear the webread aloud