May Day brought a nice surprise for Kindle readers who use the app on their iOS. Now Kindle books can be read using text-to-speech on an iPad, iPhone or iPod. Before this update it’s always been a bit frustrating for readers of Kindle books to find that there was no way to listen to their collection on an iPad. Blind and visually impaired people who already had purchased Kindle books found that if they downloaded their Kindle books to an iPad it wasn’t possible to use the built-in features offered by VoiceOver. It wasn’t even possible to use the Speak Selection feature to select a word or chunk of text to have it read out. Now it is possible to use VoiceOver (not Speak Selection though).

Kindle Reader uses VoiceOver so if you want to use Kindle’s text-to-speech functions VoiceOver needs to be installed and running. To do this go to:

 Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > On.

VoiceOver is designed to allow blind and visually impaired people to access iOS So when it is running you activate apps in a slightly different way than the standard iOS approach. Mostly this involves a double tap instead of single tap (which makes sense, after all a blind or visually impaired person will want to check the right app is selected (single tap), before activating that app (double tap). Thereafter, use of text-to-speech is pretty straightforward and quite powerful.

• In Kindle Library with VoiceOver on, tap once on a book to have full spoken information about each title, author and whether the book is installed. Double tap to open the book and start reading from where you left off.

• Use a two finger swipe down to start continuous reading from top of page.

• Use a single two finger tap while reading to pause. Two finger tap once again to resume.

• Single finger tap selects a line of text and reads under the finger. (Like Speak Selection only it gives context too.) Single finger tap anywhere to read that line. Two finger tap to return to library.

• Suppose you are in single line reading at a time (e.g. for meaning), and you want to return to continuous reading. Simply do a two finger swipe down to resume continuous reading.

• Three finger swipe right to left to move to next page, or left to right to go to previous page.

All of these options are clearly spoken out.

What does it allow you to read?

Kindle titles will work. However, Word documents, PDF documents will not offer text-to-speech (many other apps do offer this functionality).

The big advantage is in being able to read your Kindle formatted books using text-to-speech.

Can you use other voices?

While t is not at all obvious how to do it is still possible to change the voice used in text-to-speech with the Kindle. The secret is to think about how you would give access to this facility to a blind or visually impaired person. You would do it from within VoiceOver. Here’s how to do it using the Language Rotor.

Setup is atwo stage process. First, you set up the languages you want to make available from within VoiceOver. Second with Voiceover activated, select the languages from the rotor you previously set up.

Turn on voices to be selected from in Language Rotor. 

• Turn on VoiceOver as before General > Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > On
• Launch Kindle with VoiceOver On.
• Tap and rotate two fingers on the screen clockwise to turn on Rotor and the command available is spoken. (e.g. Characters, Words, Line etc.)
• Repeat the movement until it says Language – you’re ready now.
• Do a one finger slide down, it will speak out the first voice you selected as an option. Repeat the rotor action until you reach the dialect or voice that you want. That is now selected. 

Now a two-finger swipe down will speak out in your preferred voice.

Now Apple if we could only have the Scottish Voices available from within the Languages available not just in the apps but across the whole system. That would be great!

Barnes and Noble's Nook Study was designed for downloading and reading eBooks purchased from Barnes and Noble, but it can also read PDFs. You have to register to download the software, but it is free to use. Simply use the Add Item facility to copy the PDF from your computer to the Nook Study library. If you open the document, it will appear with its PDF formatting intact in the Nook Study reader. Individual words are highlighted with an orange block when they are read. It uses the default voice on the computer - Heather in the case of my laptop.

CTRL-ALT-S activates speech, then the following commands are available:

• H - Help
• Space - Start / Stop Reading
• P - Start Page Over
• A - Go Back one sentence
• S - Restart current sentence
• D - Skip to next sentence
• R - Last phrase
• W - Currently focused element

Far from perfect, but a lot better than the Adobe Read Outloud facility, for reading PDFs if a school / parent hasn't got Read and Write Gold / PDFaloud / ClaroRead.

I had hoped that it could be used for digital exams, but the facility for typing into forms seems to have been disabled, though you can type into sticky notes.

We've updated our quick guide to Free Text-to-Speech Options for the Mac. Rather than trying to cover all of the available options equally, the main focus is on the use of the built-in Apple text-to-speech system and on the free version of NaturalReader. Both of these programs will speak any text that you can select with a mouse. In the case of the Apple system you select the text to be spoken and press a key that you define to speak it. NaturalReader can speak text as soon as you select it, or when you press a button on its MiniBoard. NaturalReader can highlight text as it is spoken - changing the colour of the text as it is read out.

We've been finding that NaturalReader is prone to crash under Mac OS 10.7. Has anybody else been experiencing this problem?

We also look in a little more depth at the use of the Read Out Loud facility in Adobe Reader 10 for reading text in PDFs. This has improved compared with earlier versions of Reader, which offered options to read the whole document, or the current page (and was often very random in selecting text to be read!). Reader can now read out a single paragraph of text if you click in it. There is no highlighting so it is not always easy to see what is being read, but this is still a significant improvement on earlier versions. The program also seems to have a problem with reading text with a web link, just skipping the text and the link and moving on to the next word. Unfortunately Adobe Reader 10 cannot be used with older Macs with a PowerPC processor.

Download the Quick Guide from here.

iVona MiniReader is a free text-to-speech program for Windows PCs, very similar to the free NaturalReader program (but without the irritating 'advert' every time you open the program). Like NaturalReader, iVona MiniReader works as a toolbar that floats on the desktop of your computer, ready to be called upon as required. To speak text, simply select it with your mouse and click on the 'play' button on the toolbar. It doesn't provide fancy highlighting of individual words as they are spoken, as provided by programs like WordTalk and Read and Write Gold, but if you are just wanting to listen to a piece of text read by your computer, it is just the job! It is particularly good for reading text from web pages, but will speak any text that you can select with your mouse.

iVona MiniReader is designed to be used by the excellent iVona voices (the British English voices are a bit 'plummy', but the Welsh male voice, Geraint, is particularly good), but can also be used by any SAPI 5 computer voice, e.g. The Scottish Voice, Heather (soon to be joined by Stuart). The iVona voices are currently priced at €39 for one, €69 for two.

The toolbar can be used 'full-size', which includes options to choose the voice, speed and volume, or 'cut down' to display just the Play and Pause buttons. The buttons are smaller than the equivalents in NaturalReader - good if you are looking for a discreet tool, less good if your targeting skills are less than perfect.

The Kindle for PC Accessibility Plugin is now available for UK customers (and also for users in Australia, Canada and the U.S.). Kindle for PC is free software for reading Kindle eBooks on your Windows PC. The main feature of the new plugin is a text-to-speech tool which means that blind, visually impaired and severely dyslexic readers can listen to the book being read out by the computer. Kindle for PC Accessibility plugin has:

• Text-to-speech reading with adjustable voice settings
• Voice-guided menu navigation
• Large font sizes
• High contrast reading mode
• Keyboard navigation
• Accessible shortcuts

The Kindle reader software can be used to read out the text of the book, and blind readers can use Jaws or NVDA to read the menus and navigation instructions.

The software comes with two American voices - one male and one female - which are OK but not as good as Heather, for example. You can start, pause and stop the speech and read the current, previous or next sentences (see the list of shortcuts below). You can't use other voices on your computer with the Kindle software, and it doesn't highlight the text as it reads.

Like the standard Kindle reader, the font size can be massive (up to about 90pt), and you can change the colours (white on black, black on white, black on sepia).

For keyboard only users, there are keyboard shortcuts to navigate around the software and the eBooks.

The new Kindle reader is a significant step towards making commercial eBooks accessible for readers with print disabilities. There are now over 700,000 books available from the Amazon UK website and so it's a huge source of digital books.

I've updated our Kindle Quick Guide with the new features and you can now download it.

At a time when local authorities, schools and many parents are under financial pressure people look for savings wherever they can, including in the use of computer software. Most schools currently use Microsoft Office as their main software for general use, but licensing can be quite expensive. Open Office is a free suite of software that has many of the same uses as the Microsoft program. Some schools and local authorities have considered using Open Office, but we have advised against it in the past, as it has been lacking some of the key elements available in Word, for example the ability to use WordTalk to read text out aloud.

We have recently found an extension to Open Office, Read_Text, that provides a basic text-to-speech facility. Note that we have found the web site to be VERY flakey! You may have to go to the main Open Office Extensions site and search for Read_Text - even doing this you may have to reload pages several times before you are successful. Email info@callscotland.org.uk if you continue to have a problem with the download.

Read_Text adds a 'floating' button which can be locked to a toolbar on the display. To use the program, simply select the text in your document that you want to read and click on the speech button. The first time you use it, you will be presented with a somewhat 'geeky' window that lets you make basic settings, e.g. choosing a voice and the speed at which you want it to speak, but you can turn this off so that it will not reappear. You can choose any SAPI 5 voice that you have on the computer, including Heather. Unlike WordTalk, Read_Text does not highlight words as they are spoken, or offer additional support such as speech support for the spellchecker, but it does make Open Office more usable for somebody with reading difficulties.

Low Cost / No Cost Software Course

We will be featuring the text-to-speech facility and other potentially useful features of Open Office in a training course on 'Low Cost / No Cost Software to Support Learners with Reading and Writing Difficulties' at CALL on June 2nd. The course will also include the MyStudyBar toolbar, speech recognition in Vista and Windows 7, Google Docs and lots more!

In the past we have often recommended the use of the Firefox web browser with the CliCk Speak! add-on as a solution for people looking for a text-to-speech solution for reading text from a web site. It is easy to use, highlights sentences as they are spoken, uses a high quality SAPI 5 voice, e.g. Heather, provided that you have one on your computer and is free!

Unfortunately, Firefox is frequently updated and recent versions of the browser have not been compatible with the version of Click Speak downloadable from the CliCk Speak web site. It appears that the original developer is no longer supporting the program. Fortunately, an anonymous programmer, known as 'Sortadan' has produced a fix for new versions of Firefox. Remove any previous version of CliCk Speak from your Firefox add-ons and download the new version from the Rapid Library web site. You will be asked if you want to install CliCk Speak 1.6.1. If you do this and restart Firefox, when requested, you should have a new toolbar with a working version of CliCk Speak.

Further information is available in our Quick Guide to Installing and Using CliCk Speak.

A new version of WordTalk is now available for Windows 7 (32-bit). Unfortunately the Windows 7 (64-bit) version is not yet ready.

WordTalk is a free text-to-speech plugin developed for use with Microsoft Word. It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary to help decide which word spelling is most appropriate.

Siting neatly in your Microsoft Word toolbar it is highly configurable, allowing you to:

• Adjust the highlight colours;
• Change the voice and the speed of the speech;
• Convert text to speech and save as a .wav or .mp3 file so that it can be played back on an iPod or mp3 player.

This new version can be downloaded from the WordTalk website and will only work with Microsoft Office Word 2007 or 2010.

To find out which version of Windows 7 you have:

• Click Start, type system in the Start Search box, and then click system in the Programs list.
• The operating system is displayed as follows:
  • For a 64-bit version operating system: 64-bit Operating System appears for the System type under System.
  • For a 32-bit version operating system: 32-bit Operating System appears for the System type under System.

The Scottish Voice has been very well received by the Scottish educational community and we know that she is being used to listen to:

• SQA digital exams;
• novels;
• digital textbooks;
• Microsoft Word documents;
• resources on Glow.

She is also used by children who can’t speak and who use voice output communication aids.

Heather needs a brother! Some boys have said that they would like to listen to digital resources spoken in a male Scottish voice, and we don’t think that Heather is acceptable for boys who use communication aids. If you were a boy, would you like your voice to sound like Heather, lovely though she is?

We are hoping to raise funds to enable CereProc to create a sibling for Heather. Please contact us if you have any comments or suggestions about where we could get the money, or about a male Scot who has a good voice that we could approach to become the (male) voice of Scottish education!

During the early part of 2009 we spent some time comparing different text-to-speech utilities that could be be used to read text aloud from web sites and published our conclusions in our Reading the Web information sheet. At the time, we found the best option was to use the free Click Speak utility with Firefox. There wasn't an option for Internet Explorer that we were totally happy to recommend: Read and Write Gold worked well, but is expensive, while most of the low cost / free utilities had some feature that we were not happy with. There have been a few developments over the past year so it is worth providing a short update here, prior to revising the information sheet.

Firstly, a couple of web browsers now have text-to-speech facilities embedded within the program. On the Apple Mac, Safari users can now access a pretty primitive text to speech facility by highlighting the text to be read and using the mouse to select - Edit - Speech - Start Speaking. The computer will now speak the text using its default voice. There are a couple of text-to-speech extensions for Google Chrome, Read Me Please! and Chrome Page Reader, but we couldn't get either to work!

A Solution for Internet Explorer?

We recently came across a nice little utility, Panopreter, that can be used to read out files in a variety of formats and can also create MP3 / WAV sound files from text. Two versions of the program are available, Basic and Plus. The Basic version is free and can be used to read text files out aloud, or to create MP3 files. Unfortunately, the text files cannot be seen as they are being read, which limits the use of this program. The Plus version, costing $29.95, is much more useful. Text is visible as it is read, with each word being highlighted as it is spoken and the program can even handle PDF files. The Plus version also adds a toolbar to Internet Explorer, which provides options for either an entire web page, or selected text to be read out loud. Individual words are highlighted as they are spoken. It is also possible to use the Panopreter Plus to convert a web page into an MP3 / WAV file that can be played back by an MP3 player. In terms of value for money and ease of use, Panopreter Plus is probably the best option currently available for reading text from Internet Explorer.

We are often asked if there is an Apple Macintosh version of WordTalk, the free text-to-speech add-on for Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, there isn't, and, due to differences in the way that PCs and Macs handle sound, there is unlikely to be a Mac version.

There are a number of free text-to-speech options for Mac users:

• The Mac operating system has a reasonable text-to-speech system built in. To use it, go to System Preferences - Speech - Text to Speech. Choose a voice and a key combination to speak selected text. Then just highlight text in any program and press the key combination. It doesn't highlight text word by word as it is read out, or do anything fancy, but it works pretty well and Mac voices are generally quite good.
• TypeItReadIt is a free program, aimed primarily at people with a visual impairment, but it can be used more generally by people who want to hear text read out. Unlike the Mac's built-in system, TypeIt ReadIt does not read text directly from an application on the screen. Instead, you have to copy text from your application and paste it into the TypeIt ReadIt window. You can also Open a plain text file and have the contents read out. Note that if you are using a Word file, you will have to save it as plain text to open and read the file. TypeIt ReadIt has options to change the colour scheme and the size of text displayed. Unfortunately, the actual font it uses cannot be changed from Times, which will not suit many of the people who may want to use the program. Earlier versions of the program highlighted words as they were spoken, but this feature has been removed from Version 1.5 as it slowed the program down. This makes little difference for people with a visual impairment, but can make it more difficult for people with reading difficulties to see where they are in a document. There is a reasonable spell checker, but, surprisingly, this does not allow the possible word choices to be read out. One very useful feature is the facility to create sound files (in AIFF format), which can be played in iTunes.
• NaturalReader has a free version for the Mac, which will read text directly from almost any application, including Word, web browsers and PDF files. Simply select the text you want to read and it will be transferred to the NaturalReader MiniBoard for reading. Words are highlighted as they are read and the colour of the text is then changed, making it easy to see where you are in your text. Unlike many 'demo' versions of programs, the free version of NaturalReader can be used for as long as you want, but there are a few restrictions, compared with the full program. Firstly, it does not come with a 'voice'. This is not a great problem as there are perfectly satisfactory voices within the Mac operating system. Schools in Scotland can also make free use of the Mac version of The Scottish Voice, Heather. There is also a restriction of 5,000 characters on the length of any document to be read by NaturalReader. Most importantly, the facility to make sound files has been disabled in the free version. If this is an important feature for you, either use TypeIt ReadIt, or get the Personal Version, costing $49.50.

If you require more features than are provided in the free programs, you will have to pay for the extra facilities provided by programs such as the Personal Version of NaturalReader or GhostReader.

Heather, the Scottish Voice, which can be downloaded free from CALL's Scottish Voice web site by anyone in Scottish schools, is a product of CereProc, an Edinburgh based company. CereProc make 'custom' voices by recording and synthesising human speech, and one possibility is to create bespoke computer voices for people who are likely to lose their speech as a result of illness or disability. CereProc have created a synthetic voice for Robert Ebert, an American film critic, who lost his voice after surgery. The voice was created by analysing the recordings made for Robert Ebert's TV series. This is fine if you are a well-known (in the USA) TV broadcaster, but not so good if the sum total of the recordings of your voice consists of a few warbles from your childhood or speeches at weddings and the like. Nevertheless, it's good to see progress like this because better synthetic voices, greater individuality and more personalisation all improve the communicative experience with voice output communication aids. Certainly, the response we have had to Heather, the Scottish Voice, has been extremely positive both when she is used for communication and also when reading out digital books, learning resources and exam papers. To find out more about the voices visit the CereProc web site.

This is a chance for you to help improve the accessibility of Glow. If Glow is to fulfil it's aims it needs to be accessible to every pupil in Scotland and one way of helping many pupils with visual or reading difficulties is through 'text-to-speech' software, so that pupils can have material on Glow read out to them by the computer. There are many text-to-speech programs for reading different types of digital text, such as:

• Rod Macaulay's WordTalk (which you can download free from CALL), can read out Word documents, for example, or
• TextHelp's PDFaloud, which can read PDFs such as digital textbooks or SQA exam papers,

but we also need a program for reading text from the web itself.

Again there are several options (see Allan's Reading the Web guide at  http://www.callscotland.org.uk/Resources/Publications/Information-Sheets/) , and one of them is Browsealoud from TextHelp Systems. Browsealoud is a free program that reads 'speech-enabled' web sites and also Word and PDF files on the web sites.TextHelp have agreed to 'speech-enable' the CALL Scotland and LTS web sites and also Glow until the end of January 2010, for us to evaluate. CALL’s speech-enabled web sites are:

• http://www.callscotland.org.uk
• http://www.adapteddigitalexams.org.uk/
• http://www.books4all.org.uk/
• http://www.communicationpassports.org.uk/
• http://www.thescottishvoice.org.uk/
• http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/

All LTS web sites (http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/) and also everything accessed through the Glow portal are speech-enabled.The pilot Books for All Scotland Database at http://www.booksforallscotland.org.uk/ is also speech-enabled.To read the web sites with Browsealoud you need to download it from http://www.browsealoud.com/page.asp?pg_id=80004.Jennifer MacDougal from LTS has agreed to set up a discussion forum for the Glow users and so once you have tried out Browsealoud on Glow, go to My Glow Groups > ASN Group and add your comments about it to the discussion. The direct URL for this is https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Additional%20Support%20for%20Learning/Lists/Pages/Discussions.aspxBrowsealoud is essentially a tool for reading web sites with text-to-speech software. It can help pupils with visual impairment, dyslexia, reading and learning difficulties or pupils who are not fluent English readers access information on web sites. It can speak using a number of different voices including Heather, the Scottish voice. To take part in this trial, download and run Browsealoud and then test it on Glow or on the CALL or LTS websites, and then log any comments or issues on the Glow group. If you can’t access Glow send an email to CALL at callscotland@ed.ac.uk. LTS are currently looking at how the accessibility of Glow can be improved, and a text-to-speech facility could be extremely useful, if not essential, for thousands of pupils in Scotland (not much point in having a national intranet if it isn’t accessible to all pupils in Scotland). Browsealoud is only one option for reading the web and so you might also like to look at some others such as Click Speak, a free add-on for Firefox, but it  is really important that we all have a chance to test this particular tool to find out if it does what we all want. Please comment on whether you think Browsealoud would help pupils access Glow, as well as any problems that you come across. Take a look at the video tours and user guides on the Browsealoud web site as well – see http://www.browsealoud.com/page.asp?pg_id=80006We’re aware that you won’t have much time before the end of term, but no doubt some keen people will be unable to resist the temptation to play with Browsealoud over the break, and there will be a few weeks at the start of next term for you to try it.Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

Shortly after our recent comparison of text-to-speech utilities that can be used to read web pages, Reading the Web was released, we received an email suggesting that we have a look at the free CleanPage utility, free from ReadonWeb. We had a look at it and liked it, but it wasn't quite right. When you install CleanPage it adds a toolbar to Internet Explorer, which allows an 'uncluttered' version of a web page, without graphics and 'junk', to be created. The font and colours in the uncluttered version can be adjusted to suit the reader and it is also possible to have this text transferred to a separate text-to-speech window straight from the original web page. It seemed great for people with a visual impairment and those who just wanted to have web pages 'de-cluttered' or read aloud, but it wasn't so good for people who needed a little more support. We had three main issues:

1. Sometimes people need the pictures! If you are looking at a web page with descriptions of various animals, it is helpful to be able to see the pictures while you are listening to the text.
2. It wasn't possible to select only a part of the text on a web page, so if you only wanted the description of the zebra at the bottom of the page, you had to sit through the antelope, the bear, the chimpanzee, etc.
3. It wasn't possible to change font and colours for text in the text-to-speech window - either you could have colour options in the uncluttered view, or text-to-speech - but not both.

We outlined our concerns in an email to ReadonWeb. Within 24 hours their President had replied, saying he would ask his team to look at our suggestions. Six days later we received another email saying that our suggestions had been implemented in a new version (1.1.1.6) of the program. Very impressive!

We've looked at the new version - points 2 and 3 have been fully addressed. Point 1 can be met by minimising the text-to-speech window and highlighting text on the original web page so that it looks as if it is being read directly from the web page. It doesn't quite match our ideal - to have text highlighted as it is read direct from the web page -  but it comes very close!

For PC users with Internet Explorer, CleanPage should be the first option to consider - it may not suit everybody, but it is definitely the best of the free options. If you are using Firefox on a PC or a Mac, the best option is the free CliCk, Speak add-on.