CastReader reads any webpage aloud while highlighting each paragraph — so you hear and see the words at the same time. Dual-channel input reduces decoding effort and keeps your place on the page. Free, no account needed.
Built for how your brain actually processes text
Research shows combining audio with visual text significantly improves comprehension for dyslexic readers. CastReader highlights the current paragraph on the actual page as it reads aloud — your eyes follow the highlight while your ears process the words. No separate reader view that strips away context.
Dyslexia makes decoding — converting letter shapes into sounds — effortful and slow. Text-to-speech handles the decoding for you, freeing your working memory to focus on meaning. CastReader uses natural AI voices that handle emphasis, pauses, and rhythm, making comprehension easier than robotic system voices.
Line-skipping and re-reading are common with dyslexia. CastReader's paragraph highlighting anchors your attention to exactly where the audio is on the page. Click any paragraph to jump there. The page auto-scrolls as it reads — no manual scrolling needed.
Slow the voice down to 0.5x for difficult passages. Speed up to 2x for easy material. CastReader adjusts instantly. Everyone reads at a different pace — and your pace changes depending on the text. No shame, no pressure, just a slider.
News articles, textbooks, emails, Kindle ebooks, PDFs, Google Docs, Wikipedia — CastReader reads them all. It extracts article content automatically, skipping ads, navigation, and cookie banners. One extension for everything you need to read online.
Dyslexia affects roughly 15-20% of the population. It's not about intelligence — it's about how the brain processes written language. The core difficulty is decoding: converting visual letter patterns into the sounds and words they represent. This makes reading slow, effortful, and exhausting. After a paragraph or two, many dyslexic readers hit a wall where the effort of decoding overwhelms their ability to retain meaning.
Text-to-speech tools address this directly. When a TTS tool reads text aloud, it handles the decoding step. The reader's working memory is freed to focus on comprehension — understanding what the words mean, connecting ideas, building mental models. Research from the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity shows that audio-supported reading can improve reading comprehension scores by 25-40% for students with dyslexia.
But not all TTS tools are equal. Many read text in a separate window, stripping away the original page formatting. This breaks the visual connection between what you hear and what you see. CastReader is different: it highlights text directly on the original page, preserving the layout, images, and formatting. This dual-channel approach — seeing the highlighted text while hearing it read aloud — creates stronger memory encoding and better comprehension than audio alone.
CastReader also handles the sites that matter most for students and professionals with dyslexia: academic papers on Google Scholar and arXiv, textbooks on Kindle Cloud Reader, documentation on Notion and Google Docs, and millions of regular websites. It's a free Chrome extension with no signup needed. Install it once, and every website becomes accessible.
Common questions about text to speech for dyslexia
Yes. Research consistently shows that TTS improves reading comprehension for dyslexic readers by handling the decoding step — converting text to sound — that dyslexia makes difficult. This frees working memory for comprehension. Dual-channel input (hearing + seeing highlighted text simultaneously) is particularly effective.
CastReader is the best free TTS tool for dyslexic readers who spend time online. It reads any webpage aloud with paragraph highlighting on the actual page, uses natural AI voices, and has no usage limits. For desktop files (PDF, Word), Balabolka is also free. For phones, use your device's built-in accessibility features (Speak Screen on iPhone, Select to Speak on Android).
CastReader is free to use for everyone — no student discount needed, no signup, no trial period. Install it from the Chrome Web Store and start using it immediately. CastReader Pro (optional) adds premium ultra-realistic voices, more listening hours, voice cloning, and AI document analysis.
Yes. CastReader reads Kindle Cloud Reader ebooks (the only extension that works due to Amazon's font encryption), Google Docs, PDFs in the browser, arXiv papers, Wikipedia, and any regular webpage. It extracts the article content and skips navigation, ads, and other page clutter.
CastReader is not a screen reader — it's a text-to-speech reading tool. Screen readers (VoiceOver, NVDA, JAWS) are designed for blind and low-vision users and control the entire OS interface. CastReader is for sighted users who benefit from hearing text read aloud while following along visually. They serve different needs and don't conflict with each other.
Screen readers (VoiceOver, NVDA) navigate the entire UI — buttons, menus, everything — for users who can't see the screen. TTS tools like CastReader read the content of a page aloud while you follow along visually. For dyslexia, you want TTS with visual highlighting, not a full screen reader. The visual-audio pairing is what helps with comprehension.
Yes. CastReader's speed control goes from 0.5x to 3x. Slow it down for dense academic text, speed it up for light reading. You can also click any paragraph to jump to it and skip sections you don't need.
CastReader reads the page as-is and highlights paragraphs. For font changes, use a separate extension like Helperbird or OpenDyslexic Font. CastReader works alongside font-changing extensions — you can use both at the same time for the best reading experience.
Download the CastReader app to listen to your uploaded documents anywhere.
Hard numbers — not vibes — from authoritative sources
$2.22 billion
US audiobook sales in 2024, up 13% year-over-year (Publishers Weekly / Audio Publishers Association)
Source →51%
of US adults have listened to an audiobook in 2025 — roughly 134 million people (APA Consumer Survey 2025)
Source →2.2 billion
people globally with near- or far-vision impairment (WHO Fact Sheet, 2024). TTS is the primary access path for digital reading content.
Source →78%
of audiobook listeners multitask while listening — commute, chores, exercise (Audiolibrix Great Audiobook Survey, 2024)
Source →27.2 minutes
average single-trip US commute in 2024, up from 26.8 (US Census ACS via Statista). That's nearly an hour each day of audio-only time.
Source →effect size 0.35
measured comprehension lift from TTS for reading-disabled students across 22 studies (Wood, Moxley, Tighe & Wagner, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2018)
Source →15.5 million
US adults with ADHD per CDC 2024 — about half diagnosed in adulthood (CDC MMWR, October 2024)
Source →Every Chrome Web Store review below is verifiable at the link in each card. We don't hide negative feedback — we answer it within 24 hours.
“This is 1 of the best TTS and its smooth. If this is truly free i'll keep this 100%. Every other TTS says its free but has a secret. They interrupt or they just say better ai voices pay. But i like this voice. I've tried loads and this is 1 of the best ones that actually says free.”
“Works perfectly on vivaldi. One suggestion though. I wish it had a play button appear next to a paragraph when we hover over it. Just like in the case of speechify.”
“Extremely user friendly short keys. Placed forward backward and speed up down as Natural as it could be. Voices are great and smooth. I would recommend it over many hyped products.”
“At the very least it's better than many paid TTS models. Still not as good as ElevenReader or LAP, but maybe the best free model for TTS.”
“So glad I can finally switch voices! The default was fine but I found one I actually enjoy listening to for hours. Small thing, huge difference.”
“Best one i found, user friendly, and great voice over.”
“ChatGPT's long answers are finally listenable. Let it generate while I listen — doubles my productivity. Love the inline button next to each response.”
“I tried using this add-on to listen to an ebook on the O'Reilly learning platform, and it works smoothly. However, it always restarts from the first paragraph whenever I scroll or select a different paragraph. Please consider adding a bookmark or checkpoint feature so users can mark where the reading should begin.”
↪ Founder reply
Replied by CastReader founder Yan Xu within 48 hours: acknowledged the issue, shipped a bookmark feature in the following release. Reviewer's verbatim feedback drove the v1.2 roadmap.
“Need to highlight text and select it.”
“Hard to select text.”
↪ Founder reply
Replied by CastReader founder Yan Xu within 24 hours: apologized, asked which site/browser the issue occurred on, provided a workaround using the keyboard shortcut, and offered direct support at support@castreader.ai.
We re-test, re-write, and ship continuously. Every entry has a real date.
Rewrote landing pages with verbatim Chrome Web Store testimonials, real audiobook market data, and tested-12-extensions methodology. Every claim now has a sourceable link.
Telegram audio streaming now auto-turns pages reliably across Kindle Cloud Reader and Apple Books. Reduces session interruptions by ~70% in internal testing.
Wrote up the OCR pipeline: how CastReader handles Amazon's 184 random font alphabets and 361 unique glyphs per Kindle book. Shared in dev.to.
Native macOS app reads Kindle for Mac with word-level highlighting. Floating player + system-wide hotkeys. No browser needed.
Ranked #10 in Daily, 99 upvotes, 4 community comments shaped the v1.2 roadmap.
Switched from older TTS engines to Kokoro neural voices. User reviews shifted from 'usable but robotic' to 'enjoy listening for hours' (verbatim from review by patrick chiang).
OCR success rate improved from 78% to 89% on English-language Kindle books. Multi-column page detection added for academic PDFs.
I built CastReader because I owned hundreds of Kindle books and couldn't listen to them on my morning runs without buying separate Audible copies. The technical problem — Amazon's Cloud Reader font encryption — turned out to be solvable with OCR. The product problem — making it actually pleasant across phones, desktops, and 40+ languages — took two years of iteration. We're a small team. I answer every Chrome Web Store review personally (see testimonials above — including the 3-star and 1-star ones). If something's broken or missing, email support@castreader.ai.
— Yan Xu, founder
Last reviewed: · CastReader Team — reviewed against 2025 testing data
Free to use. No signup. Install and start listening.
★★★★★ 4.7 · Free to start · No login · Optional Pro