Stanford
Office of Accessible Education

Speechify - Tips & Tricks

Trick: Use SCRIBE to perform additional OCR (optical character recognition) so the text reads more smoothly

If you notice your PDF document isn’t reading well - or words are are being spelled out - use SCRIBE to fine tune the file. 

  • Go to SCRIBE.
  • In Step 1 - Upload your document, choose the file that you want to improve, then click "Upload"
Screenshot of Step 1 described above.
  • In Step 2 - Select output format, select "Accessibility conversion"
  • In Step 3 - Specify accessibility conversion options, select "pdf – Tagged PDF (image over text)"
  • In Step 4 - Enter email address and submit request, enter your Stanford email address. In 5-20 mins you will receive an email from pony@sensusaccess.com with a link to download the OCR’ed file
Screenshot of Steps 2 through 4 described above.
  • Add the edited file to your Speechify library

Tip: Skip URLs, headers, footers and other similar items

  • Sign in to app.speechify.com using your Speechify account credentials - preferably using a Chromium browser
  • Open the file that you want to listen to
  • Click "More" on the left side toolbar and navigate to "Skip Content"
  • Click on the check box next to the content that you want to skip
    • You can skip content such as headers, footers, brackets, braces, citations, parentheses and URLs within the document
    • Or click on "Skip All" to skip all categories of content as listed above
  • This feature will let the web app to skip content in your document, based on your preference
Screenshot of the Settings and Auto scroll as described above.

Tip: Enable dark mode

  • Sign in to app.speechify.com using your Speechify account credentials - preferably using a Chromium browser
  • Open the file that you want to listen to
  • Click "More" on the left side toolbar and enable the "Dark Mode" toggle under the Display section

Trick: Gradually increase your listening speed

  • Open the file that you want to listen to
  • Click on the "Speed" option with the face on the left side toolbar. This button also displays the speed that is currently set for your program
  • Click "Increase speed automatically" at the bottom to enable a feature intended to help you increase your productivity by gradually increasing the reading speed
Screenshot of the Select Speed section as described above.

Tip: Auto-scroll the document as it is read

  • Open the file that you want to listen to
  • Click on "More" on the left side toolbar and enable the "Auto-Scroll" toggle under the Display section
  • This feature will let the web app auto-scroll the document along with the reading
Screenshot of the Settings and Auto scroll option as described above.

Tip: Learn more about Speechify