VoiceView Screen Reader

- [Vikki] Hi, I am Vikki Vaughn, and in today's workshop we'll explore VoiceView, the feature that reads aloud items on our screen. It's nice to know that this helpful feature is built right into our Amazon Fire TV stick. Let's do a quick review of a few of the controls on our remote that we'll be using for this workshop. Near the top of our remote, we find a round four-way directional pad. When we're in a menu, we press the top of this round pad to move up the menu.

When we want to move down the menu, we press the bottom of the pad, pressing the left side of the pad moves us to the left, while pressing the right side of the pad moves us to the right. The center of the pad is the select or okay button. Below the pad, from left to right, we have the back button, the home button, which has a little bump, and the last button on this row is the menu button. We'll jump right in by turning on VoiceView. Using our remote, let's press and hold the back button and the menu button at the same time. We hear a tone, which lets us know VoiceView is ready,

- [Smart TV] VoiceView ready, home. Four of 14. Use left and right to move between items.

- [Vikki] It's nice to know that the same command turns VoiceView off. If you'd like to learn more about the Fire TV stick remote, be sure to check out our workshop in this series. The first time we use VoiceView, we have a tutorial that provides us with helpful tips when using this screen reader. Later in this workshop we'll learn how to access the tutorial through our accessibility settings. If you'd like more detailed information about this tutorial, check out the resources below this workshop.

We've landed on home in the main menu on our screen. We can return to this page at any time by pressing the home button on our remote. We notice that VoiceView not only announces our current option, but it also tells us the total number of items in the list and where we currently are in that list. We move between the items in our main menu by using the directional pad on our remote. On our screen, a green box highlights our current focus. We press the select button on our remote to open an item. Keep in mind there are several different models of the Fire TV stick.

If your menu sounds a little different than mine, it's possible we have different models, but it should work about the same. Let's press the right side of our directional pad until we land on settings. The main menu includes your profile, find, home, live TV, my stuff, several apps, and finally, settings.

- [Smart TV] Settings for Hadley, 14 of 14.

- [Vikki] Using our remote, let's press the select button to jump into our settings.

- [Smart TV] Settings, notifications, row one, column one. Use left and right to move between items.

- [Vikki] Great, we've landed on our first option, notifications. These options are set up in a grid fashion. Using our remote, let's press down twice, then we'll press the right button twice to move to accessibility. We can also press right repeatedly to land on accessibility, but since it's number 12 of 13 options, it's faster to use down and right on our directional pad.

- [Smart TV] Home, preferences, row three, column one. Accessibility, row three, column three.

- [Vikki] We'll open accessibility by pressing the select button on our remote.

- [Smart TV] Closed caption, one of eight. Use up and down to move between items. Show closed captions for videos when available.

- [Vikki] Now let's press down on our directional pad to move to VoiceView.

- [Smart TV] Alexa, VoiceView, three of eight. Manage voice guidance settings including turning VoiceView on and off, reading speed, and volume.

- [Vikki] We'll press our select button on our remote to go to our VoiceView settings menu.

- [Smart TV] VoiceView on, one of nine. VoiceView on, one of nine. Use up and down to move between items. Provides spoken feedback as you navigate items on the screen.

- [Vikki] We've heard that we're in the VoiceView menu. VoiceView is turned on and we're on the first of eight different controls. Let's quickly check them out. Let's move down by pressing down on our remote. Our next control is reading speed.

- [Smart TV] Reading speed, 1x, normal, two of nine.

- [Vikki] We'll press the select button to open this control.

- [Smart TV] Reading speed 0.6x, slowest, not checked, one of 10. Use up and down to move between items. Adjust how quickly VoiceView speaks.

- [Vikki] We have a vertical list of 10 different speeds. Let's press down on our directional pad until we land on 1x, the normal speed.

- [Smart TV] 0.8x, 1x normal, checked, three of 10. Adjust how quickly VoiceView speaks.

- [Vikki] We can press the select button on our remote to choose any of these speeds. For now, we'll leave things as they are and press the back button on our remote to move back to our VoiceView menu. Here's a friendly reminder, our back button is located on the far left of the first row below our directional pad. We're ready to move to our next control, verbosity. Let's press down on our directional pad on our remote.

- [Smart TV] Verbosity, three of nine. Adjust the amount of information provided while navigating.

- [Vikki] From here, our VoiceView menu contains several other controls that allow us to adjust verbosity, speech, and sounds volume, key echo, and punctuation. We move through options in each control in a similar way, by pressing up or down on the directional pad on our remote. When we find the setting we want, we press the select button on our remote to choose it.

- [Smart TV] VoiceView tutorial, eight of nine. Learn how to use the VoiceView screen reader.

- [Vikki] This tutorial is a great way to practice what we're learning in this workshop, as it takes a step by step through a training session for VoiceView. Let's end this workshop by putting VoiceView into action. First off, we'll use it to find a favorite TV show. Let's press the home button on our remote to return to our main menu. You might recall it's the middle button on the top row of our remote.

- [Smart TV] Home. Four of 14 use left and right to move between items.

- [Vikki] When we know the name of the movie or TV show, the fastest way to find it is to use our voice button. Let's say we're looking for the old classic, The Andy Griffith Show. We'll hold down our voice button located at the top middle of our remote and say, "Find The Andy Griffith Show." Find the Andy Griffith Show.

- [Smart TV] Andy Griffith Show, button one of one.

- [Vikki] A new page opens with our search results. They are displayed in horizontal list with the top result at the top of the list. We hear VoiceView announce the first result. We also hear information about the show,

- [Smart TV] Andy Griffith Show, 5.0 out of five stars from 3,327 customers. IMDB rating 8.4 out of 10, 1960.

- [Vikki] If we want to hear the information repeated, we press the menu button on our remote. We use the directional pad to move between results, including back and forth with left and right, and from line to line by pressing up or down on the directional pad. When we find the show we want to watch, we press the select button in the middle of our remote's directional pad. For those times when we're not quite sure what we want to watch, we can browse through the options on our home screen. Let's go there now. We'll press and hold the voice button on our remote and say, "Go home." Go home

- [Smart TV] Home, four of 14. Use left and right to move between items.

- [Vikki] Let's say we want to see what's available on Prime Video. We press right on our directional pad to move to this app, then we'll press the select button to open it.

- [Smart TV] Live, Netflix, Prime video. More details. Use up and down to move between rows such as watch next or Prime recommended movies. Use left and right to move between items.

- [Vikki] We've landed on our Prime video homepage. VoiceView provides us with several navigation tips, such as using up and down on our remote to browse between the categories. When we land on a category that we're interested in, we press left or right on our directional pad to move between the various shows or movies.

- [Smart TV] A Furry Little, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Destined at Christmas, button, I'll Be Home for Christmas.

- [Vikki] Once we land on a movie that looks interesting, we press our select button to open it. You know, we've just touched the surface of all that VoiceView can do to make our Amazon Fire TV Stick accessible. For more detailed information about using VoiceView, check out the resource section below this workshop. In today's workshop, we explored VoiceView the screen reader in our Amazon Fire TV stick. I'm Vikki Vaughn, and I thank you for joining me.