Other ways to make your computer talk

Although we have seen how Windows' Narrator (available in Windows 2000 and XP) can offer some speech output to help those with a vision impairment or literacy difficulty, it does not allow for the speaking back of chunks of text in your document or web page.

There are a number of text to speech programs that are either commercial, freeware or shareware that allow any text that can be selected with the keyboard or mouse to be spoken back in a range of different voices.

This may be a very valuable facility for someone who needs to give their eyes a rest or who has difficulties with reading.

• Vision impairment and computing (text)
• Vision impairment and computing (PDF)
• Dyslexia and computing (text)
• Dyslexia and computing(PDF)