How to use the Listen function ReadSpeaker

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 website more accessible and more pleasant to visit. As a user you don’t have to download anything.

How does it work?

Listen to the main content

You simply click the listen button to listen to the web page’s content:
screenshot of listen button

A control panel will appear (see image below) and ReadSpeaker automatically starts reading the text of the web page out loud.
screenshot of expanded player

In the control panel you can:

  • Adjust the volume
  • Pause the reading
  • Stop the reading
  • Restart the reading
  • Choose “No sound?” if your browser does not support flash
  • Choose “Settings” if you want to customize the behaviour of the service

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 which appears next to the mouse pointer. When you click the pop-up listen button, a smaller control panel will appear (see the image below) and ReadSpeaker will automatically start reading the text you have selected.
screenshot of pop-up player

In this control panel you can:

  • Pause the reading
  • Stop the reading
  • Restart the reading
  • Customize the behaviour of the service by clicking on the wrench icon

Settings

In the settings menu you can:

  • Choose whether you want to have the text highlighted word by word and/or sentence by sentence, or turn off the highlighting
  • Choose whether you want the pop up listen button to be shown when text is selected
  • Choose whether you want the reading speed to be slow, medium or fast

screenshot of expanded player with settings menu

If you click on the flash player it will be in focus so that you can control it with the keyboard:

  • Play/pause: Space bar
  • Stop: Esc key
  • Increase volume: Up arrow or the + key of the numeric keypad
  • Lower Volume: Down arrow or the – key of the numeric keypad
  • Fast forward: Right arrow
  • Rewind: Left arrow

For more information please visit ReadSpeaker’s text to speech online site.