Text-to-Speech is a great way to provide multi-modal input for students who like to LISTEN to their lectures and online learning content.
The increases in technology–ESPECIALLY browser extensions, make accomplishing the task easy in 2019!
I’m going to start with an important disclaimer, and that is simply the preference for the Google Chrome Browser [download HERE].
Starting with Chrome makes everything easier!
Find below a couple (free) Text-to-Speech: Chrome browser Extensions we recommend.
- What Chrome Extensions do you currently have? copy/paste the following into your address bar: chrome://extensions/
- Chrome Browser Store [ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions ]
Select & Speak
- Info: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/select-and-speak-text-to/gfjopfpjmkcfgjpogepmdjmcnihfpokn
- Use:
- Push “play” button at the top right of your browser window, or
- Highlight the paragraph, sentence, or word and right-click & choose Select & Speak from the drop-down menu.
- DEMO (39 sec): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwygpI3rm4c
SpeakIt!
- Info: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/speakit-text-to-speech-fo/pgeolalilifpodheeocdmbhehgnkkbak
- Use:
- Push “speaker” button in browser, or
- Highlight the paragraph, sentence, or word and right-click & choose SpeakIt! from the drop-down menu.
- DEMO (1:20 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAFk0aCW6Vg
Read Aloud
- Info: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-aloud-a-text-to-spee/hdhinadidafjejdhmfkjgnolgimiaplp
- As a single page reader, it’s great
- Pros: Will read an entire page of a browser screen. Good for single content pages only.
- Cons: For pages w/ multiple “frames” and menus (Like Blackboard LMS), I find it can be problematic (unlike the demo below)
- DEMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXkn0DVPEl4
For text-to-speech for PDF’s, there is a free Adobe product called Read Out Loud. I find it is installed already on most school computers.
Adobe Read Aloud for PDF’s
- Download: https://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/reader.html
- DEMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETOohmYui3Q
Microsoft WORD- Text-To-Speech (TTS)
Have Microsoft WORD read your document or, a document you download and open on your local machine:
Speak it, instead of Typing It!
Enable SPEECH -> to –> TEXT in Microsoft Word
Google Drive also utilizes Speech Recognition to speak into a Google Document
Address of this page: https://onlinehs.net/online-text-to-speech/