Text to speech for dyslexia on iPhone

Listening to a text while each word is highlighted lets many people with dyslexia read longer texts with less effort. TTS Reader does this for books, PDFs, scans and web articles, for free, with speed, pauses, text size and spacing you can adjust.

Updated 2026-10-25

TTS Reader is a reading aid. It does not diagnose or treat dyslexia. If reading is hard for you or your child, a teacher, specialist or organisation such as the British Dyslexia Association or the International Dyslexia Association can help find the right support.

Why listening and following along helps

Decoding words takes much of the effort in reading with dyslexia. When a voice reads the text, that effort drops, and attention goes to the meaning. Seeing the highlighted word at the same time keeps the eyes and ears together, so it is easier to keep your place and to come back to a hard word. This approach is often called assistive or bimodal reading, and text to speech is one of the most common reading accommodations in schools and universities.

A good starting setup in TTS Reader

1. Speed. Tap the speed button and choose the Learn mode: 0.8× with a short pause between words. Move to Natural (1×) when it feels slow.
2. Space between words. The same panel has a slider from 0 to 0.4 seconds. A small pause helps the highlight and the voice stay easy to follow.
3. Text Appearance. Make the text larger and add line spacing. While reading, other sentences are dimmed, so the current one stands out.
4. Voice. Try a few voices on the Voices tab; a calm, clear voice is usually easier for long texts.

What you can read this way

• school and university PDFs, in their original layout (how);
• printed worksheets and book pages, by scanning them (how);
• web articles from a link, and text copied from any app;
• about 70,000 free classic books from Project Gutenberg.

Free and private

TTS Reader has no subscription, no listening limit and no account, so a student can use it without a parent’s card or a school login. Documents stay on the iPhone and voices work offline (details).

Questions