Web pages and other text documents displayed on a computer are reformatted to allow a a user who has difficulty reading to navigate between and among such documents and to have such documents, or portions of them, read aloud by the computer using a text-to-speech engine in their original or translated form while preserving the original layout of the document. A "point-and-read" paradigm allows a user to cause the text to be read solely by moving a pointing device over graphical icons or text without requiring the user to click on anything in the document. Hyperlink navigation and other program functions are accomplished in a similar manner.