HOWTO | GET a book READ out loud

1

Import a book

Once you’ve downloaded Natural Reader onto your iPad, you need to put the text into Natural Reader. This can be a digital book (such as epub, the format used by most digital books), text document, Microsoft Word, or PDF file. You can also add files to Dropbox (getdropbox.com) from your Mac and tap on the Dropbox icon in Natural Reader to retrieve them. If you don’t want to do this, you can connect your iPad to a Mac and copy the ebook using iTunes.

2

Open the book

Once you’ve opened the book in Natural Reader it appears in the main window (it’s also be copied and stored locally in the Natural Reader app). Tap the Next page button at the bottom to move to the page where you want to start listening, then press the Play button in the bottom left corner. A pop-up with Setting Up Stream appears and the audio starts playing. The iPad needs to be connected to the internet to translate the text.

3

Listening to audio

As Natural Reader starts speaking, the text that’s being read out appears highlighted in blue on the screen. Tap on any paragraph to hear that portion.

If you’ve missed what was said, you can quickly repeat the last sentence by tapping on the Previous icon in the bottom-right of the window. You can also skip forward through the chapter by tapping on the Forward icon, which skips forward by 15% of the chapter.

4

Adjust the language

The Settings icon (top right) lets you adjust the voice. Tap Settings and Language to choose from UK English, US English, French, German, Spanish or Italian. This works with any language book, although a foreign accent with an English-language title makes the voice somewhat difficult to follow. You can use the Settings to adjust the text display using Font, Size and Paragraph. You can also purchase offline voices to use Natural Reader without an internet connection.

5

Voice settings

You can also choose from a range of male and female voices by tapping on Settings and then Speaker. You can further fine-tune voices by tapping Speed, and choosing a value from -4 (slow) to 10 (fast). This changes the speed but not the pitch, so it’s possible to listen to books very quickly. When you’ve finished listening to a book, tap Library (top left) to return to the main Library. Tapping on Settings pauses the playback, so press Play/Pause button to carry on.

6

Read from the web

Natural Reader can read out web pages as well as digital books and files. Tap on Web in the sidebar of the main library window and tap on the URL field. Enter the address of a website and tap Go. Pick a web page and tap on Read Now in the top-right of the screen and Play. You can use this to read books displayed as web pages, such as Project Gutenberg, but it’s also great for reading out online articles. Just go to any site and choose the article you want to hear – it’s as simple as that!