NaturalReader is a text-to-speech software which simply reads text from the screen and outputs them into audio.
This review will be primarily based upon the free version of the product.
The software promises integration with Microsoft Office products as well as Internet explorer and Firefox. The website gives a sample of the audio output from the reader. From first impressions, I could see that some effort has been put in to make the reader sound more human and less robotic. However, the 'more human' voices are only available on the paid versions of the product.
The free version allows a user to upload a text file from their computer for the program to read. After trying a few tests, the software seems to recognize dates such as "October 1, 2010" (recognizes the date as October 1st, 2010) but fails to understand URLs. A simple failure case was trying to get the reader to read "www.google.com". The reader read this statement as "w, w, w, dot, oogle, om".
This was a reoccurring pattern with any URL I tried.
One neat feature that was included with the free version was the Floating Bar tool.
The Floating Bar tool allows users to select any text from their desktop and have it read back to them. However, neither the Floating Bar tool or the program could detect HTML tag elements.
Despite these features, NaturalReader seems to cater towards people with slight visual impairment and not the blind. The buttons on the toolbar only interact with mouse clicks. Even for people who have limited vision, they might experience some difficulty using the Floating Bar tool. It's a rather small widget which can easily hide behind other objects on the screen. Taking a look at the testimonials, we see that customers were satisfied on either the quick and easy installation process or its ability to assist them in reading tiny text on a webpage.
