Defintely! I tend to set my speech rate a little slower than many screen reader users who have been using text-to-speech (TTS) for years; I think of my rate as "geek on chocolate-covered espresso beans," but many of my friends set their rate to "chipmunks on speed."

There is a learning curve in using TTS, both because you need to get used to the synthetic speech and because you need to memorize a lot of keyboard commands (although there are also menus you can use), which is why I suggest people try to start using the TTS as soon as possible.

There are some cheap TTS programs out there, if you want to play with them. Try googling for "free screen text-to-speech" or "cheap text-to-speech." There are also some programs which sighted people use, and these can be pretty inexpensive also (a lot of writers use TTS, as do many people with dyslexia or other print disabilities. Also, if you know Linux there are many free TTS programs for that OS.