While traditionally this has been in the realm of professional dictation and transcription services, these days text-to-speech has become far more common and an ordinary feature of everyday life.

The use of audio for commands has especially become popular for use with assistants such as Alexa and Siri, which also allow for speech-to-text to be used, among other tools. It’s also becoming much more common for audio to be used to convert text-to-speech for a number of reasons.

The traditional one is for helping people with additional needs. However, as with audio assistants, users commonly find that audio can be much easier to work with. This is the case where multitasking is required, with audio allowing the user to also direct their attention on some other physical task.

Text-to-speech software is also popular in business environments, with people utilizing it to boost productivity, especially when it comes to speech-to-text software.

Here we feature the best speech-to-text software, and additionally feature a number of free apps you can also consider using.

It comes in handy for when you want to listen to a document while multitasking, sense-check that paper or article you’ve just written, or help you retain information easier if you’re an auditory learner.

Even better, however, are its uses in the real world. The best free text-to-speech software can be enormously helpful for the visually impaired, or for someone who has a condition like dyslexia that makes reading on screens tricky. It can also help overcome language barriers for people who read a language but don’t speak it, or are in the process of learning.