How to use the "Listen to This Page" function
ReadSpeaker allows the text on the website to be read out loud to you. It provides you assistance if you have trouble reading text online. By having the text read out loud to you, you can understand the information on the website more easily. This makes the content more accessible and the website more pleasant to visit. As a user you don’t have to download anything.
How does it work?
Listen to the main content
On webpages you will find either the ReadSpeaker buttons such as this:
Or "Listen to this Page" links.
To listen to the page contents, you simply click the 'play' (arrow pointing right) button, or the "Listen to this Page" link.
In some cases, the link will summon the above ReadSpeaker button (you will have to press 'play'), while in some it will start reading the contents to you straight away.
In either case, an audio player appears (see image below) and ReadSpeaker starts reading the text of the webpage out loud.
This player will remain on top of the page and disappear once you scroll down. However, ReadSpeaker will also summon a second audio player at the bottom of the screen:
Which will remain visible as you scroll down.
In the player you can:
- Pause/restart the reading
- Stop the reading
- Use the 'progress' buttons (double arrows) to navigate in the audio
- Adjust the volume
- Adjust the speed
- Close the player
You can also open the player submenu:
which gives you the following options:
- Open the settings menu
- Enable 'enlarge text' functionality
- Enable 'click and listen' functionality
- Enter text mode
- Enter page mask mode
- Click the download icon to download the audio file
- Open detailed help popup
You can use tab/shift+tab to navigate inside the player and press enter to activate a certain button or link.
Listen to selected text
You can select a part of the text that you want to listen to and then
press the pop-up "Listen" button that appears next to the mouse pointer.
When you click the pop-up "Listen" button, an audio player appears (see the image below) and ReadSpeaker starts reading
the text you have selected.
Settings
In the settings menu, you can:
- Choose whether you want to have the text highlighted while read
- Choose whether you want the text highlighted on a word and sentence basis, sentence only, or word only
- Choose style and colours for the highlighting
- Configure keyboard shortcuts for the player and menu, as well as popup player and font size
- Choose whether you want the page to scroll automatically to follow the highlighted text
- Enable and configure the pop-up "Listen" button shown when text is selected
Please visit ReadSpeaker's website for more information about online text to speech.