Two readers, one letter.
A short story about why ReadAloud exists.
Every Tuesday, a letter arrives for Rosa. It comes from her grandmother, who lives two hours away and still believes the best things are written by hand.
Rosa is seven. She knows her letters and a good number of her words, but Grandma's handwriting loops and leans, and the long words hide inside it. So the letter waits on the kitchen table until a grown-up has time. Some weeks, that's Thursday.
Two hours away, Grandma has her own pile on the table. The print on her pill bottles seems to shrink every year. The bank sends letters full of words like adjustment and effective immediately. She keeps her glasses on a chain now, and still she holds the page at arm's length and guesses.
Both of them love to read. Both of them are waiting for someone to read to them.
One Tuesday, Rosa holds the letter up to the phone. A voice begins: Dear Rosa, the tomatoes came in early this year. The words light up one at a time, and she follows them with her finger. When it gets to the dog who steals a tomato every morning, she laughs out loud, then reads that line again by herself. Then once more, just to be sure.
That evening, Grandma does the same with the letter from the bank. In two minutes she knows what it says, and that there's nothing to worry about. She puts the kettle on, and starts writing to Rosa.
Nobody had to hurry home. The letters were always theirs. They just needed a voice.
Rosa and her grandmother are characters in a story. The kitchen tables are real, in homes everywhere.
Why we built ReadAloud
Somewhere right now, someone is waiting for a page to be read to them: a child who is nearly there, a parent at the end of a long day, a grandparent whose eyes have changed. The words are right in front of them, just out of reach.
We built ReadAloud so nobody has to wait. Point your phone at a page and hear it, word by word, at your own pace, with the hard words explained in plain language. For young readers, it can also write a story at just the right level, so the next page feels a little easier than the last.
How it works
When you add a photo or text, ReadAloud uses Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, to read the words and explain them. The reading voice is your own device's built-in voice, so it works on almost any phone or computer and costs nothing to play.
AI can make mistakes. For medicine, money and legal letters, always check with a pharmacist, your bank or the sender.
Who we are
ReadAloud is made by Read Aloud SI Ltd. We're building it one reader at a time.
If ReadAloud has helped someone you love read something that mattered, we'd love to hear about it. Write to contact@readaloud.si. We read every message.