Reading Text aloud on your Computer

Your Macintosh computer can read … aloud. There are programs available for reading text aloud for both Mac & Win, however they can cost well over a hundred dollars. Your Mac has programs already installed that can read text aloud. Below are directions for having text read aloud on both older Mac OS 9 computers and the new Mac OS X computers.

Many of you may use as your main , but only the newest version can read text. You can copy you text from any application into the ones listed below.

Mac OS 9

SimpleText The Application SimpleText is located either in your Applications folder or inside the Utilities folder, which is nested in the Applications folder. This one truly is simple: 1. Open the SimpleText application 2. Type or copy text from another application 3. Go to the Sound menu, then down to Speak All (-J is the keystroke) 4. To stop speaking, go back to the Sound menu and down to Stop Speaking (-. is the keystroke)

AppleWorks 6.x AppleWorks has been able to speak text for years (since version 3). The setup process is a little different for each version. Here are the setup directions: 1. Open AppleWorks 6.x and select a new or saved word processing document 2. Go to the EDIT menu, down to PREFERENCES, then over to BUTTON BAR 3. There is a long list of Available Buttons. Click the REVEAL triangle in front of General to close this category 4. Click the reveal triangle in front of Word Processing to see the buttons in this category 5. Scroll down to find the Speak Text button, then drag it to the main button bar 6. Click Done to close the window.

To have AppleWorks text read aloud 1. Open AppleWorks word processor document, then type or copy text in from elsewhere 2. Highlight the text you wish to have read aloud 3. Click on the Speak Text button (looks like lips) 4. To stop reading just click the Speak Text button again

Mac OS X

AppleWorks 6.x The setup process and using procedure has only one difference from the OS 9 directions. In step 2 of the setup directions changes to: 2. Go to the APPLEWORKS menu, down to PREFERENCES, then over to BUTTON BAR

TextEdit The application TextEdit is located in the Applications folder. Here’s how you do it: 1. Open Text Edit, then type or copy in text from elsewhere 2. Highlight the text you wish to have read aloud 3. Go to the Edit menu, down to Speech, then over to Start Speaking 4. To stop reading, follow the same path but choose Stop Speaking

Mac OS X Cocoa Applications There are 3 kinds of programs that run on OS X. • Classic applications are Mac OS 9 programs that can only run inside the Classic mode o Programs in the Applications (Mac OS 9) folder like SimpleText • Carbon Applications are basically OS 9 programs on steroids to run natively in OS X o Programs that came from OS 9 programs like AppleWorks, , etc • Cocoa applications are written directly for OS X & therefore take advantage of all system features o New or totally rewritten OS X applications like , Mail, & the iApps (iTunes, etc) Here are the directions for Cocoa Applications: 1. Open the Cocoa Application and highlight the text to be read aloud 2. Go to the Application name menu, which is the menu between the Apple & File 3. Under the Name menu, go down to Services, over & down to Speech, then over to Start Speaking Text 4. To stop reading, follow the same path and choose Stop Speaking

Microsoft Word 2004 This newest version of MS Word has added the ability to speak selected text. Here’s how you do it: 1. Open Microsoft Word 2. Go to the View menu, down to Toolbars, then over & down to Speech 3. The Speech toolbar shows, which you can place under the formatting palette 4. Highlight the text you would like to be read aloud, then click the Speak Selection button in the Speech toolbar window 5. To stop reading, click the Stop Speaking button in the Speech toolbar window