The solution

The one trick that helped me a lot is to use an app called Speechify. In this app you can upload a PDF and then you can have an automated voice over read you the text while it highlights the words that it reads.

This is pretty awesome for me when I have to read long Academic texts in German as high german isn't the most fun language for me even if I can read it.

The settings to adapt

Here a few of the settings that really make it better:

• Skip what's in parenthesis and the citations: this skips the academic references that you still see, but don't hear

• Faster reading speed: I like to listen at the 1.5 to 2x speed which makes it faster but still understandable

• AI voices: choose one of the AI voices (paid feature) that sound much nicer than the base robotic voices

• Use it on mac or iPad: in that way you can have both the voice and the full PDF page visible

The paid version really makes sense for me, especially because I use it for about a month per year and you can subscribe to it for just a month and because it unlocks a few key features.