This command is a marvelous accessibility tool in all Acrobat viewers. You can have Acrobat PDF documents read aloud to you without having to purchase additional equipment/software such as screen readers. If you want to turn your back on the computer while doing some other activity, you can have Acrobat read aloud any open document.

When you choose View >> Read Out Loud, a submenu opens with four menu commands. The menu commands all have keyboard shortcuts associated with them, but before you can use the commands you must first select Activate Read Out Loud in the submenu. The menu commands then become active as you see in Figure below.

For pausing and stopping the reading, you may want to remember these keyboard shortcuts. The commands include:

• Reading Order. Three choices are available from the Reading Order pull-down menu. When in doubt, use the default setting to Infer reading order from document (recommended).

• Infer reading order from document (recommended). With this choice Acrobat makes some guesses about the order for what items are read on the page. If you have multiple columns and the layout is not clearly set up as a page with no layout attributes, the reading order may need some finessing. Acrobat will do its best to deliver the reading in an order compliant to the page layout.

• Left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading order. Reading order delivers the reading ignoring any columns or heads that may be divided across a page. This choice might be best used for a book designed as text only in a single column.

• Use reading order in raw print stream. Delivers words in the document in the order recorded in the print stream.

• Override the reading order in tagged documents. Tagged PDF documents contain structural information and they are designed to be accessible with reading devices so the proper reading order conforms to the way one would visually read a file. Tagged PDF documents have a designated reading order based on the tree structure.

If the PDF document is a tagged PDF with a reading structure defined and you want to ignore the order, deselect the check box. You might make this choice if the tagged PDF does not accurately support the proper reading order and the delivery is more problematic than reading an untagged file.

• Override the reading order in tagged documents. Tagged PDF documents contain structural information and they are designed to be accessible with reading devices so the proper reading order conforms to the way one would visually read a file. Tagged PDF documents have a designated reading order based on the tree structure.

AIf the PDF document is a tagged PDF with a reading structure defined and you want to ignore the order, deselect the check box. You might make this choice if the tagged PDF does not accurately support the proper reading order and the delivery is more problematic than reading an untagged file.

• Confirm before tagging documents. If a document is tagged before reading aloud, a confirmation dialog box opens confirming the file is a tagged document. When the option is checked you can confirm the options that will be used before Acrobat prepares an untagged document for reading.

Tagging can be a time-consuming procedure, especially for larger documents. This preference corresponds to the Confirm Before Tagging Documents option in the Accessibility Setup Assistant.

• Volume. You adjust volume settings in the Volume pull-down menu. Choose from 1 to 10 to lower or raise the volume.

• Use default voice. By default, the Use default voice check box is enabled. If you want to change the voice, deselect the check box and open the pull-down menu adjacent to Voice. The voice availability depends on voices installed with your operating system.

Your text-to-speech default voice installed with your operating system is used. By default you may only have a single voice available. If you want additional voices, consult your operating system manual. If no additional voices are installed, you won’t be able to change the voice. If you have multiple voices installed, select a voice from the pull-down menu.

• Use default speech attributes. The speech attributes are settings for the pitch and the speed the voice reads your file. If you want to change the pitch and/or reading rate, deselect the check box. Pitch can be changed to a value between 1 and 10.

To completely understand what’s going on with the pitch settings, experiment a little and listen to the various pitch changes with the voice you select from the Voice pull-down menu. Words Per Minute enables you to slow down or speed up the reading. The default is 190 wpm. If you want to make a change, type a new value in the field box.

• Read form fields. This setting is designed for use with Acrobat PDF forms. Check the box to have form field default values read aloud. If default text is added to a field, the text is read aloud. If the default text (or any text added to a text field) is replaced, the content of the form fields are read aloud.