Six-card walkthrough. Routing on card 2 determines what plays in cards 3–5.
Read text aloud in any app, get help with writing and spelling, and customise everything to suit you. The next two cards cover the essentials — about a minute.
Tick anything that sounds like you. You can always explore the rest later.
Pick the one that suits what you're doing:
Press Ctrl at any time to stop. Clicking the mouse anywhere also stops speech.
Hover Read works in any Windows application — including PDFs, images of text, and locked documents. Readable uses OCR transparently when text can't be selected the normal way.
The Hover button's dropdown lets you choose how much text is read each time: Word, Line, Block (paragraph), Document Read (everything, with auto-scroll), or Off.
Readable installs six Sensory Fonts on your PC — custom typefaces designed for easy reading. They appear in every Windows app's font picker: Word, Outlook, browsers, Notepad, anywhere you can choose a font.
When listening, the Readable Banner shows the spoken text in your chosen font, size and colours — automatically, when the toolbar is docked at the top.
Inside Microsoft Word, the Font button on the Readable toolbar gives one-click access to Comic Sans, Trebuchet, and Microsoft Sans Serif — plus all six Sensory Fonts are available via Word's main font dropdown.
The Spacing button (also Word-specific) adjusts character, line and paragraph spacing, plus background colour.
For a coloured overlay across your whole screen — websites, video, every app — open Sensory Tint from the More menu.
Open the More menu on the Readable toolbar and choose Save to Audio — Readable converts your text into an MP3 using your current voice. Save it, transfer it, listen on the go.
For whole PDFs, choose PDF Reader from the same menu — it opens Sensory PDF Reader, the companion app that handles entire PDFs including scanned ones.
Sensory PDF Reader is a full standalone PDF reader — reads PDFs aloud, supports text and freehand annotations, and is JCQ-compliant for UK examinations.
Launch any of these tools from the More menu on the Readable toolbar.
Click the Voice Typing button on the Readable toolbar — it launches Microsoft Voice Access. Speak words, they appear as typed text in any application.
If you prefer typing, Windows 11 Prediction suggests words as you go — press Tab to accept the first suggestion.
For phonetic prediction (helpful when your spelling is wide of the mark), click the Predict button on the toolbar and switch to Sensory Prediction. It uses 65+ phonetic rules — typing "fone" might suggest "phone".
Inside Microsoft Word, the Word Check button uses Word's own spell-check and thesaurus with Readable speech on top.
Hold Ctrl + Shift and hover over any word — anywhere on screen, in any app — and the Word Information popup appears. Readable speaks the word, shows its definition, a pictogram, and any homophones it could be confused with.
Works in browsers, PDFs, emails, even images of text — no internet needed. The dictionary covers 147,000+ words; the thesaurus 110,000+ synonyms.
Inside Microsoft Word, the Word Check button gives quick access to Check Next, Look Up, Thesaurus, and Homophones: Show/Hide — using Word's own dictionary and thesaurus, with Readable adding speech on top.
Outside Word, Readable provides everything itself — offline.
Word Information popup · Dictionary & Thesaurus · Homophones
The Sensory Ruler is a horizontal coloured bar that sits across your screen, helping your eyes track lines of text without losing place. Launch it from the More menu on the toolbar.
Readable also includes 15 ambient sounds — rain, forest, café, white noise, brown noise — that some users find helpful for concentration.
Ambient sounds have separate volume controls for when Readable is speaking and when it's silent — so the background fades when speech is playing and returns when it stops. Turn them on from Settings → Ambient.
Inside Microsoft Word, the Spacing button has a Focus Mode that strips Word's menus and toolbars away for a clean reading space.
Click the Settings cog on the Readable toolbar to:
All of this can be changed any time — start with the voice and speed, the rest can wait.
Six places to explore further. Browse any time from More → Show me how on the toolbar.
Visual comfort
15 tips
Listen to text
18 tips
Audio on the go
3 tips
Writing help
12 tips
Word meanings
6 tips
Focus
8 tips
The full Readable help is also at help.sensoryreadable.com/readable — for deeper reference and step-by-step guides.