BrowseAloud is:
- Free to download
- Easy to use
Keep reading to find out more about:
- Toolbar - listen to text using the BrowseAloud toolbar
- Voice control - you can control how BrowseAloud reads sites out to you
- Highlighting - BrowseAloud highlights the word and sentence it is reading out
- Continuous reading - you can tell BrowseAloud to keep reading a page until you tell it to stop
- Small download - BrowseAloud has a small firewall-friendly download
- Technical Specification - Browsealoud minimum requirements
Toolbar
You can use the Speech buttons on the BrowseAloud toolbar to read text aloud.
To use the BrowseAloud toolbar, first make sure the website you have currently open works with BrowseAloud. The Speech buttons on the BrowseAloud toolbar are as follows:
– Play (Control + Mac Cmd +S). Click on this button and then hover your mouse over an area of text on the web page to hear the text read aloud. You can hover your mouse over sentences, captions, images and so on. An image name will only be read aloud if the person who created the website has included a name
– Rewind (Control + Mac Cmd + P). Click on this button to speak the previous text aloud
– Fast-forward (Control+ Mac Cmd +N). Click on this button to speak the next text aloud
– Stop (Control + Mac Cmd +S). Click on this button to stop the system from reading the text aloud.
The Shortcut keys that you press to perform the above actions are specified in brackets.
You can only see the button when the button is enabled, and vice versa.
Voice control
You can change the way BrowseAloud reads out and highlights your text. You can do this using the Preferences window, which is shown below:
To set up Preferences:
Select the Preferences option from the BrowseAloud menu.
Alternatively:
press the Mac Command key and Comma keys on your keyboard
right-click on the BrowseAloud icon in the Dock and select Open BrowseAloud Preferences.
The Preferences window is displayed.
Select the voice you want to use by selecting a speech engine from the Voice drop down list. If you want to hear a sample of the voice you have selected you can click on the Test button.
Adjust the way the voice sounds by clicking on any of the
icons and dragging them across the following bars:
Pitch - you can change the voice pitch. Male voices tend to have a lower pitch than female voices
Speed - you can change the speed of the voice. You can make the voice speak slowly or quickly to suit your personal preference.
Click on the Test button to test any changes you have made to the voice.
You can select the colors you want to use to highlight the word and the area of selected text, by clicking on the following buttons in the appropriate section:
Font color - click on this button to select the color of the font
Background color - click on this button to select the color of the background.
If you are not happy with the new settings, click on the Reset to defaults button to revert back to the original Browsealoud speech and highlighting settings.
Click on the OK button to save the settings.
Highlighting
BrowseAloud has a dual color highlighting system - it highlights the section of the page being read and the particular word being read:
This means that you will always know:
- Which part of a page is being read
- Which word on a page is being read
- How much of a page remains to be read
Continuous reading
The Continuous Reading option in the Speech menu allows you to read a web page from start to finish or until BrowseAloud is interrupted by a new action.
To use Continuous Reading:
Select Continuous Reading from the Speech menu or press the Control + Mac Cmd + R keys on your keyboard.
Instruct BrowseAloud to read the text aloud using the toolbar or the Speech menu.
BrowseAloud will read the page from start to finish.
Small download
- The BrowseAloud for Mac download is 5.18 MB (compared to around 27 MB for the most recent version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, for example)
- The download is also specially-designed to be firewall-friendly
BrowseAloud for Mac Technical Specifications
- Operating System X 10.3.9 or later
- 256 Mb RAM (512 Mb is preferable)
- Compatibility with Power PC or Intel processor.
- Sound card and Speakers
- 20 MB Free Disc Space
- Supported Browser - Safari Browser
Understanding the toolbar
When you start Browsealoud the Browsealoud toolbar is displayed, which is shown below. Click on the toolbar below for more information on using the toolbar buttons.
To use the Browsealoud toolbar, first make sure that the website you are currently viewing works with Browsealoud.
You can see one of the following labels displayed at the bottom of the toolbar, indicating the status of Browsealoud:
-
Loading - this is displayed when Browsealoud is starting up on your computer
-
Active, polling current page - this is displayed if Browsealoud is still loading or it cannot read the current page, for example, if it is a PDF document
-
Inactive - this is displayed when you are not using Browsealoud
-
No page available - this is displayed when Browsealoud cannot detect a web page, most likely due to there being no Safari page open or because the URL in the current page is blank
-
Active, current page enabled - this is displayed when you click on the
button and
are ready to read aloud the content on a website that works with Browsealoud -
Active, current page disabled - this is displayed when you click on the
button but the
current website does not work with Browsealoud.
If you want to move the Browsealoud toolbar on the screen, click and hold down the mouse button on the title bar, then drag and drop the toolbar onto the place where you want it to be positioned.
When you start Browsealoud, the Browsealoud toolbar will automatically stay in front of all the other applications you have open, at all times. If you do not want this to happen, make sure the Always on front option is deselected in the View menu. If you cannot see this menu, click here.
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