Reading a PDF aloud

Read Aloud works on any PDF open in Mote PDF, in natural-sounding voices. It is the same Read Aloud students use elsewhere in Mote, so there is nothing new to learn.

Reading a selection

Drag to select any text on the page and have it read aloud. This suits a single paragraph, a question a student is stuck on, or a caption.

Reading the whole page

Use Play Page to read the document straight through rather than selecting as you go.

If nothing reads

The usual cause is that the PDF is a scan, which is a picture of text rather than text itself. See Making a scanned PDF accessible with OCR, which adds a text layer and makes the document readable.

Who it helps

Read Aloud on PDFs matters most for students with dyslexia or reading delays, and for multilingual learners meeting grade-level material with clear pronunciation of academic vocabulary. It is available to everyone on the same worksheet rather than switched on for particular students.

Read Aloud is one of several tools that work on PDFs. See Using Mote Chrome Extension tools inside Mote PDF for the rest.