If you love reading, chances are that you also love being read to, which may have stemmed from a childhood of being read aloud to. Perhaps, on the other hand, you dread reading because it feels like a chore, you’re dyslexic, you’re hearing impaired, or you have difficulties with comprehension.

Whatever your motivation, thanks to advancements in text-to-speech technology, you can now easily get text read aloud to you. This can help to feed your love for reading or reduce bibliophobia.

In this article, we’ll explore ten key benefits of using text-to-speech technology.

1. It’s More Accessible

Text-to-speech technology is increasing access for persons with special needs, especially the visually and hearing impaired, and the dyslexic.

Games like the Forza 5 Horizon now come with native on-screen sign interpreters for the deaf.

Wearable tech-sleeves can also translate sign language into speech. Screen readers can read text aloud making reading much more accessible to the physically challenged, whether for education or entertainment purposes.

2. Enhance Your Literacy and Reading Skills

Using text-to-speech technology, you can improve your literacy, reading, and writing skills over time. Literacy skills are those needed for reading and writing. This includes critical skills like listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as well as the ability to differentiate sounds.

Listening to an audiobook while reading, for instance, encourages you to pay more attention to the words, including their production, pronunciation, and tone. It can help to ignite a love for reading in children.

3. Improve Listening and Comprehension Skills

Audiobooks improve listening skills

Listening is a core skill that cuts across the board as far as learning is concerned. With read-aloud and text-to-speech technologies, all you really have to do is listen.

Simply use the playback controls on your preferred text-to-speech reader to determine the speed of playback for a particular paragraph or page to ensure you can comprehend what it’s saying.

Most screen readers use auto-scroll and auto highlight to help you follow along as they read. This way, you can improve your comprehension skills and help you learn the difference between words that look the same but are pronounced differently. For instance, by seeing and hearing them simultaneously.

4. Stimulate Language and Cognitive Skills Development

One of the fastest and most effective ways to learn a new language, whether for a child or an adult, is by reading or listening to the language consistently.

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University found that the volume of white matter in the language center of the brain actually increased following a six-month daily reading program.

Say you want your child to master Spanish, you can introduce that child to contents written and read aloud in Spanish using a text-to-speech reader. You can also try other apps that help you to learn Spanish.

Together, this can boost your child’s cognitive capacity to pay attention, read, learn, think, reason, and recall in multiple languages.

Related: The Best Free Text-to-Speech Tools for Educators

5. Fuel the Imagination and Enhance Creative Thinking

So much goes on inside your brain whenever you read, irrespective of how you read. So much, in fact, that you would probably read a lot more if you truly understood its immense benefits.

For instance, if you read a novel describing the White House in great detail, you’ll feel like you’ve been there. If you then visited in real like, it might feel like déjà vu because you’ve actually been there in your mind.

Research backs this up, showing that both the language and experiential parts of our brains are activated whenever we read or are read to.

6. Produce a Calming Effect by Pairing It With Background Music

Reading with background music

Most children love being read to at night as a bedtime routine. Some adults also read themselves to sleep. If you love being read to, you can have your preferred text-to-speech device do the reading.

Not only can you have a device read you your favorite novel in your favorite voice, you can also throw in your favorite music for a calming effect.

7. Make Reading a Shared Experience

With text-to-speech technologies, you can make reading an enjoyable shared experience.

By reading along with your preferred text-to-speech device, you’re participating in a worthwhile shared experience, making it easier to discuss a story or reminisce about the memory in the future.

8. Allow Multitasking and Improve Productivity

Reading a paperback, although enjoyable, takes time, and there’s just no way around that, not even book summaries. If you want to read a lot, that translates into a lot of time.

On the other hand, with an audiobook or e-reader you can still read your favorite author while running on the treadmill, cooking dinner for the family, or taking a shower. This will save you lots of precious time in the process.

Reading speed is another factor to consider. Every bibliophile knows that all too familiar longing for one more book. Your text-to-speech device can help you to cover more titles faster.

Related: Physical Books vs. Audiobooks: Which Is Better?

9. Prevent Eye Strain and Reading Fatigue

Prevent eye strain

Lots of avid readers can be easily identified by their glasses. This requirement can be a result of prolonged reading, which can easily lead to eye strain and reading fatigue.

With a text-to-speech reader, on the other hand, you can hear the text being read aloud to you to save your eyes. You can even hook it up to your Bluetooth speaker, soundbar, or home theater to give you freedom to move around and reduce other bodily strains in your back or neck.

This is an effective way to prevent eye strain and reading fatigue due to prolonged reading. In addition, it would reduce the sedentary lifestyle of sitting for long periods.

10. Facilitate a Love of Reading and Diminish Bibliophobia

Page count scares some people from committing to reading a book. If this is you, using a text-to-speech device, software, or browser can really help.

It could allow you to cover books without getting fixated on the number of pages. All you have to do is swipe to read the next page, and the next page until you’re done.

Similarly, if you pick an interesting audiobook with a pleasant narrator and accompanying background music, there’s a good chance that you’ll completely lose yourself in the experience.

Related: The Best Text-to-Speech Apps for Android

Reading (Aloud) Should Be Fun

Reading, including reading aloud should be fun, but most critics and pundits are quick to dismiss auditory reading with a wave of the hand as being a lesser form of the activity. We hope this list has gone to show that there’s no doubt that using a text-to-speech service can have multiple measurable benefits over traditional reading.

Having learned about some benefits of using text-to-speech technology, you can now learn how to put it to work by using the read-aloud feature in Microsoft Edge.