I have many Voices installed on my Windows OS system. I am trying to use these voices for Text To Speech (TTS). Many of them I cannot use and the following error message is displayed: "The selected voice is not installed or is disabled"
How can I 'Enable' these voices?
Thanks in advance
One day this helped me
The Text-to-Speech tab in the Speech tool in Control Panel presents the options for each TTS engine. In addition to the general options, each engine can have a different set of specific features. For that reason, not all the resulting dialog boxes will look the same. It is possible that no special features have been included and some of the properties buttons will not have an associated dialog box.
Setting Up Your Hardware
NOTE:I assumes that you use Classic View in Control Panel. To change views, follow these steps:
Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
In Control Panel, click Switch to Classic View or Switch to Category View.
Set Up Speakers
Speakers vary greatly in design and purpose. Consult the speaker manual for hardware and software specifics. However, most models can be installed in a similar fashion.
To set up speakers, follow these steps:
Locate the sound connections and connect the speaker jack to the computer. Most computers use an internal sound card and often the connections are in the back of the computer. These are a series of connections the same size and diameter as the speaker jack. In many cases there are two sound out connections:
One will be labeled as a line-out connection. Most speakers that require a separate power supply (such as an electrical (AC) adapter or batteries) should use this connection. It is also used to export amplified sound to recording devices including recordable CDs and tape cassette systems.
The other connection is for the non-powered speakers. Because the signal is boosted by the computer, powered speakers may be damaged if connected.
Plug the speaker into the proper connection.
To test the connection, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Speech.
On the Text-to-Speech tab, click Preview Voice to hear the currently selected voice. The text is spoken and the words are highlighted as they are spoken. If the speakers are working properly, you will hear the spoken words.
If you do not hear sound after you connect the speakers, see the "Possible Text-to-Speech Problems" section of this article for troubleshooting procedures.
Select an Audio Output Device
To select an audio output device, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Speech.
On the Text-to-Speech tab, click Audio Output.
Select either Use preferred audio output device or Use this audio output device.
Use preferred audio device sets the output device as the default for the system. Select this option if you want to use the same output device for speech as all other sound for the system. It is also the default option for Speech properties. Often, computers will have only one output device, such as a pair of speakers. The default device is designated in the appropriate sounds or multimedia properties in Control Panel for each operating system. Additional information for the specific panel is available through the associated Help files.
Use this audio output device allows you to select another device for speech programs only. The drop-down list is active if other devices are available. In this drop-down list, select the device that you want. This does not change the default device for other audio programs. For example, you may want all speech output to go through your headset rather than the speakers.
Set Audio Output Device Options
By default, this option is disabled. However, other speech engines may include advanced properties for audio line out options. If so, Audio Output will be available. Follow instructions on the screen or those documented separately for the specific engine.
To set up audio output device options, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Speech.
On the Text-to-Speech tab, click Audio Output.
Follow the instructions presented on the screen.
Configure Text-to-Speech Options
Determine the Selected TTS Voice or Engine
To determine the selected Text-to-Speech voice, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Speech.
On the Text-to-Speech tab, the displayed name in the Voice selection drop-down list is the currently active voice.
Click Preview Voice to hear the active voice. The text is spoken and the words are highlighted as they are spoken.
Preview TTS Voice
To preview the Text-to-Speech voice, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Speech.
On the Text-to-Speech tab, the displayed name in the Voice selection drop-down list is the active voice.
Click Preview Voice to hear the currently selected voice. The text is spoken and the words are highlighted as they are spoken.
During playback, Preview Voice will change to Stop. Click Stop to interrupt the voice playback.
NOTE:You can change the text to be read by the Preview Voice by highlighting the text and typing in new text. These changes are not permanent and when you reopen Speech properties or select a different voice, the text will reset to the default.
Change the TTS Voice or Engine
To change the Text-to-Speech voice or engine, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Speech.
On the Text-to-Speech tab, the name displayed in the Voice selection drop-down list is the active voice.
Click the active voice inside the drop-down list, or use the arrow to display a list of available voices.
Click a new voice to select it.
The newly selected voice speaks the text in Preview Voice box.
Click OK or Apply to accept the new voice.
Notes:
A Text-to-Speech voice is closely associated with a particular speech engine. It may not be clear from the displayed name which language a voice is using. After selecting a speech engine or voice, test the voice and language by clicking Preview Voice.
The language or voices supported by a speech engine may not be obvious from the engine's displayed name. Refer to the specific user's guide for detailed information about the engine. This includes not only the language supported, but also the lexicon purpose. The lexicon purpose indicates whether it is a general grammar or jargon specific to a profession such as legal or medical.
Microsoft does not provide additional speech engines (voices), but a number of third-party products are available that support the new Microsoft Speech API. For information on these products, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/speech/evaluation/thirdparty/engines.mspx
Change TTS Voice Rate
*To change the Text-to-Speech voice rate, follow these steps:*
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Speech.
Select the Text-to-Speech tab.
Move the Voice speed slider to change the rate of the Text-to-Speech voice. By default, it is set to Normal.
Click Preview Voice to hear the currently selected voice at the new rate. The text is spoken and the words are highlighted as they are spoken.
To Change the Text-to-Speech Volume
To adjust the volume output levels, follow the procedure below. Note that not all devices support this option in the same way. Some devices will not support volume control and the Volume button will be unavailable. Other devices may use their own display. In those cases, follow the instructions presented on the screen or documented separately with the engine.
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Speech.
On the Text-to-Speech tab, click Audio Output, and then click Volume.
A volume control mixer will be displayed. Adjust the appropriate device to the required level.
Refer
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306902
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080125142917AAhJ1QB
Related
Disabled users who cannot control a mouse use the keyboard to navigate the page. How do you allow them to select the various styles (like bold etc) in ckeditor5? These elements are NOT in the tabindex of the page by default.
Tabbing through a form, I expect to be able to interact with every interactable element on a page
I see that CKEditor 5 has a list of keyboard shortcuts in their documentation. Pressing Alt + F10 (may require Fn) when the editor input area has focus moves keyboard focus to the editor toolbar. Then, keyboard arrow keys can be used to navigate the toolbar.
I am not saying that CKEditor is accessible, but it is information you may consider.
WCAG 2.1.1 says that all functionality must be available from the keyboard. Sometimes people mistakenly interpret that to mean that all interactive elements on the page must be keybaord accessible.
Here's a screenshot of ckeditor5 from their website. I'm not a ckeditor5 user but I'm assuming you're talking about the editing bar at the top.
While it's strongly encouraged to allow a keyboard user to navigate to the editing bar of ckeditor5, it's not strictly required if all the functionality of the editing bar is available via the keyboard.
For example, if I can select text then press Ctrl+B to make it bold, then the functionality of bold is available even if I can't tab to the 'B' on the editor bar.
The editing bar has a lot of stuff on it so everything would need a keyboard shortcut in order to pass WCAG 2.1.1. It looks like you can configure ckedit5 pretty extensively, https://ckeditor.com/docs/ckeditor5/latest/installation/getting-started/configuration.html
The docs on CKEditor keyboard support will list the possible keyboard controls to format text.
Text can be selected with Shift + the arrow keys
and formatted bold with Ctrl + b
for more options the menubar can be focused with Shift + F10
For web applications, the idea is to follow the desktop application’s keyboard conventions, so that users of assistive technology don’t need to learn yet another interaction paradigm.
The example to look at for rich text editors on Windows would probably be Word or Wordpad. There are two ways to format text.
Shortcut to open the menubar
The Menu bar pattern on the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) specifically mentions rich text editors in a note:
For example, a rich text editor may have a menubar that receives focus when a shortcut key, e.g., alt + F10, is pressed while editing. In this case, pressing Escape or activating a command from the menu may return focus to the editor.
For any common pattern you should find recommendations for the keyboard interface on the APG. Since it’s platform-independent (not only for Windows), such shortcuts will only be found in notes.
Shortcuts for formatting directly
Selected text can often be formatted directly by pressing + a letter for the English abbreviation of the format, like i for Italic or b for Bold.
CKEditor supports these.
I'm writing a Firefox (web)extension. I have a browser_action in my manifest.json, with a default_popup. I want my extension to be accessible by all users, including those with vision impairment.
So I'd like to, as I change and develop things, test what it's like to (for example) interact with this feature, using only the keyboard. How do I do this? How do I focus and thus "click" the toolbar button, without a mouse?
Ideally, without actually running special screen reader software every time.
So I'd like to, as I change and develop things, test what it's like to
(for example) interact with this feature, using only the keyboard. How
do I do this? How do I focus and thus "click" the toolbar button,
without a mouse?
You can use commands to set a keyboard shortcut.
_execute_browser_action: works like a click on the extension's browser action
You may also add commands.update() (Firefox 60+) API to let users change that keyboard shortcut.
Thanks for considering accessibility. Just to clarify, because I don't think you meant this, but you can do keyboard testing without a screen reader. Just don't use your mouse :-) Seriously.
In my current firefox, I have an address bar, the search field, then a bunch of plugins on a toolbar.
On a PC (should be similar for a Mac, but Cmd instead of Ctrl):
I can move my keyboard focus to the address bar with alt+d or ctrl+L (cmd+L)
I can move my keyboard focus to the search field with ctrl+k (cmd+k)
Interestingly enough, I could not get my focus on the toolbar. I could have sworn I could tab from the address field, to the search field, to the toolbar, but it's not working now.
If you can get your focus there, then you should be able to use the left/right arrows to move between tools and then space/enter to select the tool.
If you want to play with a screen reader, NVDA is free.
I'm trying to test the screenreader dialogue on my application for 508 compliance. It works mostly how it should except a problem I'm running into is when I navigate element to element the screenreader reads each keystroke like so "TAB" when I want to traverse through my application. How can I turn this off while testing? I'm running JAWS 17.
You can't and you shouldn't. Different verbosity settings like functional keys announcement, punctuation reading, repeated characters announcement, treatment of dialog controls and so on, and so forth, — all of these are entirely up to the screen reader and the user who adjusts these settings. Just like, for example, speech rate or pitch. As a JAWS user, I wouldn't be happy, and more than that, I would be angry if some app developer forced me to turn off my Tab announcement or changed my punctuation level.
Update: If you just want to turn off keystrokes announcement for yourself, do the following:
Press Insert+6 on the number row to go to JAWS Settings Center. You can do this from the JAWS main menu, but the single keystroke is much faster.
If you want to make your change by default for all apps, press Ctrl+Shift+D to open the default file.
In the search box type labels and search for Key Labels.
In the dialog that appears turn off the announcement for all of the keystrokes you don't want to hear. Note that if you mute Tab, all of the keystrokes like Shift+Tab and Ctrl+Tab will be muted automagically.
click OK several times to leave Settings Center and save your settings.
It's just a user setting options.
If you do that in your jaws, it's coild bé different for an other person !
I have a room full of sales representatives. Currently, when they make a sale, they write it on the board and ring a bell next to the board. Lately we've been too busy for them to get up and ring the bell. I would like to have a small window or application open on their computer that has a button and then I have a separate window or application open that when they click the button it makes a bell sound. I do not want this to play on the other reps computers - just mine. Does anyone have any ideas on how this can be done?
Yes! You can make a new dummy Facebook account, and the 'button' will be entering anything in the private messages, so you will hear a sound there. However, you will have to avoid using other Facebook accounts on the same computer.
I'm working on a web application and I want to make it easy to use via screen reader.
Testing stuff in JAWS is time consuming.
Is it possible to make JAWS display text instead of reading it?
I don't want actually to hear the content during development.
I just want to see what would be read by JAWS.
There is no speech viewer for Jaws, as far as I know. However, you can make it write all speech output to a log file using the "/z" switch. Unfortunately, you cannot view the log file in a text editor while the screen reader is running, because it is locked.
Open a command prompt or bring up the Run dialog by pressing Win+r and type:
"jaws_executable" /z"log_file"
Where "jaws_executable" is the full path and file name of the Jaws application and "log_file" is the location and name of the speech log file.
Important: There should be no space between "/z" and the log file name.
This is an old thread, but since it came up top in my search I thought I'd update it. JAWS 15 has just introduced this capability through the "Speech History" feature. Follow these directions to enable it:
If you miss one or more messages spoken by JAWS, you can press
INSERT+SPACEBAR, followed by H to open a Results Viewer window
containing up to the last 50 announcements spoken by the synthesizer.
When the Speech History window opens, you are placed on the line
containing the most recent announcement. To clear the history, press
INSERT+SPACEBAR, followed by SHIFT+H. The history is also cleared when
you lock the computer or completely log off. If you do not want JAWS
to maintain a speech history, clear the Enable Speech History check
box in Settings Center.
Read more in the JAWS 15 What's New document under New Speech History for Speech-only Users.
For those of you stuck with JAWS 14, Nektarios Paisios answer using the "/z" log worked best for me.
I believe there is a visual indicator in JAWS, but my version of JAWS is being a bit wonky. These days, NVDA plays pretty similarly to JAWS, so you can use that, and it has a speech output console: Right click the NVDA icon in the system tray, select Tools, and Speech Viewer.
The easiest way to see what a screen reader 'sees' is to disable the CSS. This will show you everything on the page that the screen reader can access. This will give you a good idea what is going on during development until you want to get into the more complicated stuff.
See http://www.iheni.com/quick-tip-testing-web-content-for-screen-readers-without-a-screen-reader/. This site has a lot of useful info too http://webaim.org/articles/.
You can enable the Braille Viewer in Start Menu > All Programs > JAWS 14.0 > Braille Viewer.
Braille Viewer will render visual text output of what would be sent to a braille display. It sometimes uses abbreviations or shorthand but is a close representation of the speech output.
Also take a look at Fangs Screen Reader Emulator for Firefox. It will render a text output of what a screen reader would announce on a page, in the correct read order, though it does not render dynamic content.
JAWS is supplied with a Braille Viewer in the 'Utilities' folder, which will render any text from the focus.