PR: PDFAloud - Accessibility Breakthrough for Adobe Acrobat, PDFs
PDFAloud from textHELP! will read your PDFs out loud with Acrobat & Reader
14 February 2003
A new product developed by a Northern Ireland-based software house is set to open up PDF documents for millions of people around the world with reading difficulties. Known as 'PDFAloud,' the software will allow users across a variety of languages to hear their PDF documents read out loud to them.
'PDFAloud' was developed over the last two years by textHELP!, a company specializing in assistive technology, and converts PDF text straight into speech. The product works as a simple add-in tool bar for Adobe Acrobat and will be launched in the marketplace next month.
Traditionally, many users of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader with reading difficulties have regarded PDFs as inaccessible. However, according to textHELP! CEO, Mark McCusker, that is set to change:
"PDFAloud is a simple plug-in to Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader. The product reads any page instantly and can read documents with thousands of pages.
"It will also be the only product on the market to read PDF files with synchronized colored highlighting in the original acrobat document. This will lead to greatly enhanced accessibility for struggling readers, even those with mild visual impairments".
'PDFAloud' can also be used to read online PDF files, Web pages and scanned documents.
Over four hundred million people already have Acrobat Reader on their computers and 'PDFAloud' is expected to be of interest to public and private organizations as well as individuals.
This is particularly true given the increasing levels of legislation being produced to ensure equal access to information. 'PDFAloud' will be an important tool to help organizations meet these legal obligations.
Initial feedback on the product has been very positive. For example, 'PDFAloud' as 'the missing link for Acrobat' and 'a cool extension for Acrobat' are just two of the many comments that have been received from Special education Directors in the USA.
textHELP!, who are an approved Adobe Solutions Network Partner, have a strong track-record in the area of assistive technology and the launch of 'PDFAloud' comes after an announcement this month that its sister product, 'Browsealoud', which converts webtext into speech, has led to the company becoming a Microsoft® Certified Gold Partner.
Although based in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, textHELP! has a strong presence in the American education market where its products are helping students with reading difficulties access mainstream software applications.
textHELP! was incorporated in 1996 when it received an injection of funding from VC company Delta Partners. In the past four years turnover has increased ten-fold and employment has quadrupled to 24.
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