♪ (music) ♪
Hi everyone, my name is Laura,
and I'm on the Chrome Accessibility team at Google.
In this video we'll dive into how to use
the select-to-speak feature on your Chromebook.
To provide a bit of background
we currently offer two different features for text-to-speech
within your Chromebook accessibility settings.
First, we have the ChromeVox screen reader,
which is a full system screen reader
that you can turn on at any time
by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Z as in zebra.
ChromeVox speaks every time you move your focus,
and you can also use it with a refreshable Braille display.
ChromeVox is most beneficial for anyone
with more significant vision loss.
We have other videos in this series that dive deeper into ChromeVox,
so if you're curious to learn more
definitely check those out.
Separately we have our select-to-speak feature
which makes it possible
for you to hear only certain text spoken aloud on the screen,
kind of like on-demand text-to-speech.
This can be useful for anyone like me
who is low vision or anyone who simply benefits
from both listening to text spoken aloud while visually reading it.
It can be helpful to anyone with reading or comprehension challenges,
new language learners, or many others.
Let's turn this feature on
and take a look at the different ways to use it.
To turn on select-to-speak, I'll navigate to the Chromebook settings
by opening up the system menu and clicking on the Settings button.
If you choose to navigate here by keyboard
you can do so by pressing Alt+Shift+s,
pressing tab to get to the Settings button,
then pressing Enter.
Next I'll type "Accessibility" into the search fields,
then choose Manage accessibility features.
Now that I'm in the list of Chromebook accessibility settings
I'll head to the text-to-speech section
and turn on Enable select-to-speak.
Now let's look at the different ways to use the feature.
I'll head to Google's accessibility website
google.com/accessibility to explore.
The first way I can use select-to-speak
is to hold down the search key
and then use the touchpad or mouse to click and drag a box
around the content that I want read aloud.
For reference,
I like to hold my thumb down on the touchpad
and use my index finger to then drag a box.
If I just want to read one line aloud,
I can hold down search and then just click that line.
Everyone should be able to access and enjoy the web.
I can press control to stop speech at any time.
A second way to use this feature
is to use the select-to-speak button
that appears in the lower right of the screen
when the feature is on.
It looks like a little sound icon with audio waves.
I can click or tap that button with my finger,
and then similarly use my touchpad to drag a box.
Or even use my finger to drag a box
if I'm on a touchscreen Chromebook.
Developers and Publishers.
Information and resources
to help you develop accessible products and apps.
You can also use this button
while select-to-speak is speaking to stop speech.
The third way to use select-to-speak
is to highlight specific text using my touchpad.
Once it's highlighted,
I can press Search+s as in select,
and then only that text will be read aloud.
Should be able to access.
This can be useful if you want to select very precise text
instead of a larger region.
As I've been using this feature you may have noticed
that each word is highlighted as it's spoken aloud.
This is something you can customize and select-to-speak settings.
Let's take a look at that now.
I'll head back to the general Chromebook accessibility settings
and under the toggle to turn this feature on
I can click Open select-to-speak settings.
Here I can do a number of things.
I can change the color of the word by word highlighting,
for example I can change it from pink to green,
or I can turn off the word highlighting if it's distracting.
Here I can also access my speech settings.
Right now I have my voice set to use the system text-to-speech voice.
To personalize the voice I can click Text-to-speech settings
and from there I can customize the speech rate, pitch, and volume,
and even hear a preview of my selected preferences.
Note that any adjustments I make to the global setting
for the system voice will also take effect
if I'm using the ChromeVox screen reader or other text-to-speech services.
I can also choose different voices, languages, or accents.
I have a handful of voices I have added to the list,
including one of the acapellas children's voices
I purchased from Acapella through the Chrome Web Store.
I'll play a quick preview of this now:
Hi, there I'm your text-to-speech voice.
Using the children's voices can be really helpful
when working with younger users,
so definitely check them out.
So that's a quick demo of the different ways
to use and customize select-to-speak.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you have questions or feedback about Google accessibility
find out more at google.com/accessibility.
To sign up for user studies, to explore new features,
and help shape Google products go to google.com/usability.
For general feedback or questions about the topics you've seen today
consider joining the Google group
chromebook-accessibility@googlegroups.com
and participate in the conversation with other community members.
Or reach out to our support team
by sending an email to disability-support@google.com.
Also look out for other videos
on ways to make Chrome and Chromebooks easier to use.
Again, I'm Laura, and on behalf of myself and the Chrome Accessibility team,
thanks so much for watching.