quixotic chaotic

For reading web pages aloud, I've been using my phone's built-in text reader that can be found under the Accessibility tools. It's a bit robotic, but you get used to it. (I mostly use it to read fanfic now, but it's also been useful for news & school stuff in the past :) )

For audio books, I cannot recommend Librivox.org highly enough. It's an entirely volunteer-read collection of public domain works, and the recordings are also public domain (which they specify when they record things) and so are completely free. You can listen on the website or download to your computer, phone, put on a CD, whatever you want. This site allowed me to keep up with all the reading I had to do as an English major, as just about anything older than like 1920 or so is in the public domain. (Also, on a personal note: I have all of Jane Austen's novels on audio from this website now, and other classics like the Count of Monte Cristo that I've always wanted to read but knew I'd never get thru by staring at the page. So not just for school, also just for fun!) I mostly use it for novels & such, as that was what I was studying, but I know they also have stuff like the Bible, older political essays, etc.

Also, if you can afford it, I've found a subscription to Audible well worth the money for anything newer (that therefore wouldn't be on Librovox). It's like $15 a month, and for that you get one 'credit' each month. You can buy an audio book on Audible for the full price at any time you want, but they're often reeeeaaally expensive, like $60 each, easy… So you can pay that price, or you can buy it for one credit. So that means once a month you basically get to buy an audiobook for $15 no matter how much more it would have cost normally. (I got the Hobbit & all of the LOTR books on audio this way, which, again, I've seen go for easily upwards of $70 on CD, just because there's only one unabridged version of the books on audio & the CDs can be hard to find.) You can also let your credits build up, I think for up to 6 months before they start to expire? So I would keep my subscription over the summer & winter holidays & then be able to buy all the books I needed with my Audible credits at the start of each semester.

The last thing I can suggest is… reading out loud to yourself, if you're able & have a good quiet environment. Recording yourself doing so is also good so you can play it back later instead of having to read it all over again. I started doing this with some of my Queer Studies readings for class, because they came as these gnarly old PDFs (so no go on a screen reader) & were often very dense, very esoteric, and not available anywhere on audio because of being 1. nonfiction & 2. from a fairly young, small field of study. It definitely takes some getting used to (and working thru a lot of anxiety in my case), but I found that reading out loud to myself helped me slow down & focus better on what was in front me, whereas my mind will wander off, my eyes will jump around, and my head, hands, and arms will quickly start to hurt if I try to just 'muscle through' and read like a """normal person""" (<-- sarcasm). Plus, lots of studies have shown that reading out loud generally helps with memory retention, as it engages multiple senses, instead of just vision!

And of course, as others have said, see what accommodations your school's Disability office can offer you! They provided me with a Livescribe pen to record audio in class that would be automatically synced with what I wrote on paper (because my hands hurt a lot & prevent me from taking notes) and with Dragon Naturally Speaking software so I could dictate my essays & stuff instead of typing or hand writing (again: my hands are shit) – and I never even knew either of those existed until I got all set up with our Disability Services office here! So it's always worth it to find out what they can do for you & your specific needs.

I hope any of this helps! Good luck!