Q. Our son, who is entering high school in the fall, has been diagnosed with a reading disorder. We have used Books on Tape for some of his school textbooks, but we understand there are software programs that read word texts. Do they work well with text that is scanned into the computer? We have a PC. Any suggestions?

David and Sarah Stein@

A. You folks are living with this situation, so you know better than I do about how much time you can spare for this goal of converting school materials into computerized speech. I can tell you that the real roadblock you face is the amount of time you'll need to spend scanning school material into your computer.

The rest is something of a cakewalk.

Blessedly, there are many ways of getting modern PCs to read text aloud. The technology even has reached the point where the computer sounds pretty human.

It's too bad you don't have a Mac instead of a PC because Apple has built an instantly accessible text reader into its operating systems from nearly the beginning. But PC software now abounds in the text-to-talk arena.

Point your PC's browser to www.readingmadeeasy.com and you'll be able to download a free text converter called E-Text Reader and learn about your other options that cost money but deliver much to those who need this kind of assistance.

The Website and E-Text Reader come from Premier Assistive Technology Inc., of Dewitt, Michigan, and offers software designed to do exactly what you want to accomplish. In addition, the company offers a $149 Scan to Speech product that handles the whole process from controlling your scanner, to converting text, to reading it aloud.

This premium product employs far more sophisticated technology than the free E-Text Reader, which uses rudimentary pronunciation and default voices built into Windows such as Microsoft Sam, Microsoft Mary and Microsoft Mike.

You will quickly find that it takes a frustrating amount of time to scan each page of school material. Figure on 30 seconds or a minute per page to scan in the text and run the optical character recognition software that comes with a great many scanners. At that point E-Text Reader will do a bang-up job of reading aloud the text file your OCR software creates. It does so in limited and stilted voices.

The free software works great, but it also works wonders to whet one's appetite for the paid products. You will find demos of the better-sounding voices on the Web site.

Have a question for Jim Coates on technology? Send an e-mail to askjimbiz@tribune .com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column.