Read-along audio

Read-along audio describes an article display where words are highlighted as the voice pronounces them. The user does not have to choose between reading and listening: both happen at once, the eye following what the ear hears, like karaoke applied to news.

How it is possible

Synchronisation relies on one precise piece of data: for every word in the article, the exact moment it is spoken in the audio file. This data, known as word-level timestamps, is a natural by-product of systems that generate audio from text. The player then simply tracks the playback position and highlights the matching word, scrolling the page along with the progression.

It works in both directions. Click a word in the text and playback jumps to that exact point; drag the progress bar and the highlight follows. Text and audio become two views of the same content.

What it is actually for

Read-along is not a visual gimmick; it serves identified needs. For dyslexic readers and people with reading difficulties, hearing a word while seeing it is a support mechanism long established in educational tools. For readers whose first language is not the site's language, it ties written form to pronunciation. For everyone else, it keeps attention on the page: a user following the highlight stays with the article instead of drifting to another tab, which shows up in time on page and in the listen-through rate.

For a news site with an accessibility commitment, it is the natural complement to plain audio: some audiences need the audio without the text, others the text without the audio, and some specifically need both together. The WeDispatch audio player includes word-by-word tracking with no extra work for the newsroom.