Frankly I’m one of those people who gets a little irritated when I hit a website and a movie comes up or audio starts playing. But my learning style lends itself to reading, not listening, and that’s not true for everyone.
iSpeech is an online service that instantly converts text to speech. Cut and paste up to 50 words to give it a try with their basic service without registering. You can download or embed the resulting audio, and they say you can convert web content, documents, your blog… anything to speech.
I’m a little hesitant to call this a free or low-cost tool because I couldn’t find the prices for the premium voices (which sound MUCH better than the robo-chick I started with). But it might be worth exploring.
Here’s my sample: A testimonial from a speaking gig.
iSpeech: Convert Text to Speech Free. Listen to any Document, Website or Blog.