Google Docs™ reading support
Read aloud, follow along, and personalize the reading view.
Student Reader v1.6 is a reading-support add-on for students, teachers, accessibility, and literacy support, with optional English-to-Spanish translation and Spanish read-aloud.
Features
Student Reader helps students listen to text directly inside Google Docs. Speech is produced with the browser's built-in speech synthesis voices on the student's device.
Read the entire document, selected text, the current paragraph, or from the cursor. Pause, resume, stop, or replay a sentence while sentence highlighting—and word highlighting when supported by the browser voice—helps readers follow along.
Use Current Line or the Reading Ruler, then adjust text size, font, letter and word spacing, line spacing, background, and Reading Workspace width.
Select a word with a mouse or keyboard and hear it pronounced in English or Spanish using an available browser or system voice.
In Original English reading, save a reading position, resume later in the same browser, and manage up to five bookmarks with Go to Bookmark and Read From Here.
Pause to reflect on the main idea, a key detail, a confusing part, or a personal connection. Prompts can be read aloud; responses remain only in the open Student Reader session and are not graded.
Choose Spanish to translate the loaded English reading text, use a Spanish interface and Reading Check-In prompts, follow the translated preview, and listen with an available Spanish browser or system voice.
Privacy
Choose a source, load its text, and use the reading controls in the sidebar or Reader Workspace. Available voices come from the browser and operating system.
The add-on stores reading preferences and limited reading-position or bookmark metadata locally in the browser. Document text, translated text, and Check-In responses are not stored there.
Speech uses browser or system speech synthesis. Optional Spanish translation begins only when Spanish is selected and processes the loaded English text with Google's Apps Script Language service. Translation does not change the Google Doc or create translation history. Student Reader does not use AI comprehension, analytics, advertising, or telemetry.