This is a quick review of the various Sensory PDF Reader  icons seen around the edge of a PDF document;


Open/Close/View PDF File



The top left hand corner of the PDF Reader view shows the file open/ file save as icons, as well as the page thumbnail view and page turner controls. You can open files from your local store and cloud store. You also can drag and drop any PDF file onto the  PDF Reader window and it will open. The page thumbnail view can be toggled on and off.


Text Size/Zoom control for PDF file




The top centre icons will change the document zoom level, therefore increasing font size. You can also turn the document through 90 degress for better viewing of landscape pages with a normal portrait orientation document. You can set the document fit the page height, fit the page width, or set at 50% zoom through to 400%.


Background Colour Change


 


It is possible to change the background colour of the PDF document, from a list of selected colours as above. This may help with reading.


Speech Settings


With Sensory PDF Reader, any text accessible PDF files can be spoken with the inbuilt text to speech functions. There is a settings button to choose the voice, pitch, speaking rate and volume (see below).




Any text you select with your mouse pointer will be spoken, unless Silent Mode is selected in the speech settings.


To stop the text to speech speaking, press the Control (Ctrl) button or left click your mouse. Speech will stop immediately.


Sensory PDF can also automatically speak the text underneath your mouse point (word/line/block - see below). When automatically speaking the text under the house, you can choose to have the text highlighted with the "Use Highlight" settings. The highlight colour is determined by the background colour of the PDF.


There is also the possibility to add our "Underline-Highlight" method on the recent PDF Reader update, and you can select the colour of the underline.



Speak Word, Line or Block


There are three options for  automatically speaking the words underneath the mouse. It can be set to speak a single word only, the current line under the mouse pointer, or a section or block of text. The amount of text in a block is determined by the document layout.



Video of Sensory PDF Speak Options (internet access required).




The voices available will dependent on your PC, your country and any other voices you have downloaded or installed. There is also a silent mode to prevent any speech from being created.




Inaccessible PDF files


If the PDF document you have loaded is not speaking, it is possible the document in inaccessible. Try selecting some text with your mouse, and if this isn't possible your PDF file is likely to be inaccessible. You could use PDF Convert app  to convert any pdf image file, jpg or png (document photo) into an accessible PDF for use with Sensory PDF Reader. The converted document will look identical to the original, but the text will have been extracted by PDF Convert using optical character recognition (OCR). There are also a range of internet cloud services to convert documents to accessible PDF if you prefer.