Welcome to Speak & See
Welcome to Speak & See. Speak & See is designed to help you learn to understand spoken English, read English websites and documents, and write English.
Speak & See will work with any application or software program on your PC. The highly-visible Speak & See Toolbar can be locked in one place, docked to the top of the screen or can be left to float around the screen as suits you best.
Speak & See Overview
Speak & See provides an easily-readable floating toolbar that will lock onto any Windows software application you have open and active. You can easily add or remove buttons from this toolbar. The full list of buttons is described in the next section.
The speech features of Speak & See are powerful. One of the key benefits of Speak & See is that it can read back menus, button texts and tooltips, as well as any text displayed on screen. The program will also instantly read back any text that you select using your mouse. It will also read back characters, words and sentences as they are typed.
Speak & See Toolbar
Speak & See Toolbar Buttons
The Speak & See Toolbar has a number of clear buttons to control various features. Buttons that you don't want to use regularly can easily be removed from the toolbar, by simply clicking on the Settings button, and changing the View Settings.
Play and Stop Buttons
To read Microsoft Word documents click your mouse pointer to where you want to start reading from. Click the green Play button to start to read back text from any Microsoft Word document using the pre-selected text-to-speech voice.
Click on Stop to halt the text read back. Clicking the mouse will also stop the reading.
By clicking on the Advanced Speech Settings button you can choose to highlight in Microsoft Word the words or sentences as they are spoken, as well as control the style of speaking.
In other (non-Word) software applications such as web pages, e-mails etc. all you need to do is highlight (select) the text you would like read back by using your mouse. When you have finished selecting, it will read the text back immediately. You can also press the green Play button to replay the text.
Homophones Button
When working in Microsoft Word, click your mouse pointer somewhere within the paragraph you would like to check for homophones. Clicking the Homophone Button will highlight all the homophones in that paragraph. Homophones are words that sound alike but are different in spelling, meaning or origin. An example of a pair of homophones is blew and blue.
Check Button
Speak & See contains an integrated word and document checking Feature. We have concentrated on bringing together the Word spell checker, thesaurus and a separate homophone checker into one simple Check Button.
Save Button
It is possible to convert the text in an open Microsoft Word document or web page into an audio or video file to save on your computer. The save to audio function can also be easily accessed from the toolbar and within Speech Settings.
Extras Button
The Extras button provides a handy link allowing you to expand the software with additional content.
Settings Button
The Settings Button brings up the Settings Menu featuring the main setting areas: Speech, View, Prediction, Check and Scan (Plus version only).
Speak & See Settings
Speak & See's Speech, View, Check Word & Keyboard and Look Up settings can all be modified from their own menu "tabs" within the Speak & See Settings Menu. The Settings Button is always present on the Speak & See Toolbar.
Speech Features
Speak & See's ability to make the computer talk is one of its key innovative features. Speak & See uses ScanSoft's Realspeak voices, which are high quality, human synthesised voices. Speak & See may also work with any other text to speech synthesiser voices that may be installed on your computer.
With Speak & See you have the following extensive range of speech facilities:
· Make Microsoft Word documents speak by simply clicking the cursor at the point you want to start, and clicking the Play Button. or .The text can also be highlighted as it is spoken back.
· Make Web Pages Speak by hovering your mouse or simply pressing the Play Button [or F7].
· Have any text from any PC program spoken back instantly once selected by your mouse. Great for proofing any text from word processors and listening to your e-mails.
· Echo back letters, words or sentences as they are typed into your computer in most applications. Great for positive confirmation that you have typed what you wanted to!
· Automatically hear many menu items, tooltips and "objects" spoken by hovering the mouse over the item.
· Make audio and video files from Word documents or web pages for listening to/watching later on your PC. Or you could transfer the audio/video files from your computer to a portable device. (Using separate portable audio player software).
· At any time you can stop the computer talking by pressing the key or clicking the mouse button.
Many of these speaking features can be turned off if they are not helpful to you using the Speech Settings and Advanced Speech Settings screens.
Making Word Documents Speak
Open Microsoft Word and open the Word document you would like to have spoken. Alternatively, type some text.
Click your mouse at the place in the document where you want the speaking to start.
Press the green Play Button or . The text will be spoken back to you, and also highlighted.
Read how to change the Highlight Settings.
Using Ctrl+Hover
In Speech Settings, ticking the "Speak word on Ctrl+hover" box will enable you hear one particular word at a time. To hear the word, place your mouse over it and hold down the key. Speak & See will then speak the word.
Using Stop After Sentence
In Speech Settings, ticking the "Stop after sentence" box will set Speak & See to only read one sentence at a time. To read the next sentence you will need to press the Play button again.
If you do not have "Stop after sentence" checked, you can also read the next sentence using Ctrl and F7 .
Using Arrow (Cursor) Keys
When you move around the text in any text area, including Microsoft Word, using the up/down/left/right arrows on your keyboard (instead of your mouse) you can choose whether Speak & See speaks by ticking "Arrow Keys".
When moving the up or down arrows, Speak & See will speak the full line of text. In this way, you can have a document spoken to you line by line, by using the down arrow key.
Pressing the Ctrl and left or right arrow will speak the next word from where the cursor is.
Pressing the left/right arrow will speak the next character in the word.
Pressing the Shift and down arrow to select a number of lines of text will allow that block of lines to be spoken.
Making Web Pages Speak
Speak & See allows most web pages to be spoken back easily, especially when using Internet Explorer 6 or above.
With Internet Explorer, load up the web page that you would like to have spoken and open Speak & See.
If you press the green Play button or , the web page will be spoken from "top to bottom" in an order that is related to the way the web page is built.
If you click your mouse at the beginning of the web page article that you would like to have spoken back, a "virtual cursor" will appear. See below:
Pressing the green Play Button or will start the read back, and the sentence will highlight in your chosen colour.
Speak & See will carry on reading the web page until you press Stop or .
An alternate way of making hyperlinks and text in web pages speak within Internet Explorer is to just "hover the mouse" over the text. This will also work in Mozilla Firefox.
If you don't use Internet Explorer, or the web pages aren't speaking, simply select the text with your mouse, press Ctrl+C and then press the Play button. Speak & See will read anything that you select with your mouse.
There are some settings in Advanced Speech Settings that can control the speech when mouse selects the text, and the speech in Internet Explorer when hovering the mouse.
Making PDF Files Speak
Using Accessible PDF reader
Accessible PDF is a free extra for Speak & See which allows you to import PDF documents into a readable format. To read accessible PDFs, click on the Extras button on the Speak & See toolbar and choose "Accessible PDF". Accessible PDF will now run and you can choose to open your PDF file. Once opened, the PDF can be displayed in either plain text or web page layout. Speak & See can then be used to read out the text.
Speak text from PDF when Mouse Selects
Speak & See will speak back any text that you select with your mouse from an accessible PDF file. To do this, select or block some text with your mouse. The text should be spoken back immediately once you let go of your mouse. If you would like to have the text spoken again, press the green Play button on the Speak & See toolbar. With some PDF files, you may have to copy (CTRL+C) the text first, before pressing the Play button. Some PDF files will be secure or inaccessible, so we suggest using the Scan from PDF method above.
Using Ctrl+C and the Play button
In Speech Settings, ticking the "Speak word on Ctrl+Hover" box will enable you hear one particular word at a time. To hear the word, place your mouse over it and hold down the Ctrl key. Speak & See will then speak the word.
Making Other PC Programs Speak
Speak when Mouse Selects
Speak & See will speak back any text that you select with your mouse. To do this, select or block some text with your mouse.
The text will be spoken back immediately once you let go of your mouse. If you would like to have the text spoken again, press the green Play Button or on the Speak & See toolbar and it will repeat the text.
If you don't want the text to be spoken when you select, you can turn it off from within the Advanced Speech Settings .
To turn off the speech when selecting with the mouse, uncheck the "Speak when mouse selects" tick box.
When this is turned off, you can still have text spoken back when selected. However, to hear the text you need to copy the text (press Ctrl and C) and press the green Play button or on the Speak & See toolbar.
To stop the speech at anytime, click the mouse, press Stop or .
Speak word on Ctrl+Hover
Ticking the "Speak word on Ctrl+hover" box in Speech Settings will enable you hear one particular word at a time. To hear the word, place your mouse over it and hold down the Ctrl key. Speak & See will then speak the word.
Below is a list of common applications Ctrl+hover will work with:
· Internet Explorer
· Microsoft Office (including Word and Outlook)
· Mozilla Firefox
· Adobe Acrobat Reader 8
· NotePad
· Windows Mail/Outlook Express
Speech Settings
The main Speech Settings screen allows you to choose the voice that speaks the text back to you. You can also set the speed of speech and volume for this voice. Speak & See is supplied with ScanSoft's Realspeak Voices, but it may also work with other voices installed on your computer. This will include the Microsoft system voices such as Sam, Mary, Mike or Anna.
Voice
Speak & See installs the ScanSoft Realspeak Voices as standard. Clicking the down arrow next to the currently loaded voice will show you the range of voices available to be used with Speak & See.
Speed & Volume
Change the speed and volume by moving the slider bars left and right.
Test Button
When you change the voice setting you can test the new setting prior to clicking OK. Loading a new voice takes a second or two, so please be patient! After it is loaded, you can then test it. It will say "This is a Test" in the newly selected voice.
Pronounce Button
The Pronounce Button opens the text to speech pronunciation list. Whilst the Realspeak Voices are incredibly accurate, there are times when it may not pronounce words quite as you like. This could be, for example, names of people or place names. The Pronounce tool will "force" the voice to pronounce something the way you want. You can do this by taking a "sounds like" approach. Read the Pronounce Settings Help to Learn More.
Save Audio File Button
It is possible to convert the text in an open Microsoft Word document or web page into an audio file to save on your computer. The voice used for the conversion is the Realspeak Voice selected at the time. You can then listen to this audio file later, email it to someone, or transfer it to a portable audio player using the software provided with that device.
Read the Save Text to Audio section to see the step by step guide to making the conversion.
Advanced Speech Button
There are a number of Advanced Speech Settings.