It is not possible to hide the cluttering icon from the toolbar.

My eyesight is deteriorating and I have found Read Aloud to be a lifeline because it is simple to use, unlike a couple of the more sophisticated/complex key command driven tools that require frequent practising to memorize the commands.
While there are sometimes mispronunciations of known words, the usefulness of the tool far outweighs any disadvantages.
Also, while selecting the voice, I didn't come across any accents that could be identified as truly Canadian, but I have managed to find one that is fairly close.

t works very well and supports various languages

WORST voices ever! You can't listen to this!

Why do you need to access my data and active URLs?

IMPORTANT: Default voice is GARBAGE. For English "GoogleStandard British English (Benjamin)" was very good. You have to give special permission for it to work, which was not super easy. Follow these instructions:

1. Click the permission thing in the settings that show up when you choose this voice.
2. Press the grant permission button.
3. A new page will open. Do NOT press the blue button that says "Try text-to-speech free" or "Start free". Scroll down and press the other blue button that says "Speak it" or similar.
4. Click "I am not a robot" and do a stupid test thing such as clicking on all boxes that contain bridges.
5. Now everything should work and you can close these tabs!

La extensión se salta frases, palabras en muchas paginas, tienes que revisar a mano que se salta

randomly stutters, loads for a minute, then gives up.
skips the first ten words.
can't see short sentences unless highlighted.
worse than useless.

A ferramenta é simples e prática, isso é ótimo, mas eu também adoraria poder mexer na velocidade do texto

Amazing! Who needs Speechify when you can use OpenAI voices directly!