Text to Speech - do-it-yourself podcasts!

There are a number of good apps that convert text to realistic speech. One of the best is Natural Reader. All sorts of text can be converted to very natural sounding speech with a variety of voices. Web pages can be converted to speech along with word-processing files, and PDFs. I'm finding it very handy for a long article that I don't want to read just now.

A long article on the web, for example can be converted to audio by simply copying the page address, opening Natural Reader and pasting the link in. Natural Reader has a limited version free and a Pro version for $9.99US.

Text to audio is very useful for children and adults with reading difficulties, people with physical disabilities that limits their reading, people who don't like reading on a smartphone and people with spare time driving or gardening or painting who have plenty of time to listen.  People who cannot speak can type their comments and have them spoken.