Android Low Vision: Select to Speak

Today we're going to check out the Android Select to Speak feature. Select to Speak will take the text you've selected on the screen and read it out loud.

This is different from the Android screen reader TalkBack. If we set up TalkBack, it's always on and reading information whenever we use the phone. But Select to Speak reads only the text we've selected. To find out more about TalkBack, check out our Listen with TalkBack series.

If you don't see Select to Speak in your accessibility settings, go to the Play Store to download the latest version of Android Accessibility Suite. For more information on how to do this, check out the resources by scrolling down below this workshop.

And one more thing before we get started, if you'd like to select a different language or voice for all the Android features that read text out loud, see the resources for steps on how to choose different settings. Now let's find out how Select to Speak works, and we'll begin by heading over to the Settings app which is right here on our homepage.

First, we'll touch right here on our Settings app to open it. And next we'll scroll down to find Accessibility and tap on the word to open the Accessibility settings. Now we can scroll down below the display heading and find Select to Speak. Then select it.

And now we'll scroll down again. Under the Options heading, we find the Select to Speak shortcut with the toggle switch on the right. We could use the toggle switch to turn on our Select to Speak shortcut automatically but we want to take a look at the different options. So, let's tap here on the name.

Next, we have a screen asking us to allow Select to Speak to have full control of our device. We want to give this feature access to read any of the text on our screen. So, we'll scroll down and select Allow.

And now we have another screen that lets us choose our shortcut, so let's select Tap accessibility button. This screen also gives us a couple of pointers on how to use Select to Speak which we'll cover in a minute. For now, we'll select Save at the bottom right.

And now when we're using an app or reading an article, we can turn on Select to Speak by using the accessibility button, which on this phone is inside the navigation bar at the bottom right corner of the screen. To learn how you can make changes to the accessibility button, see the resources. Let's check out Select to Speak with an article in the Google News app.

We'll start by going to our home screen. To do this, we'll move down to the bottom of the screen to find the home button which is this circle right in the center of our navigation bar. Or if you like to use gestures, swipe up with one finger from the bottom of the screen to get to the home screen. You can find more on gesture navigation and how to switch from gesture navigation to the navigation bar in the resources below. Let's go ahead and tap the home button inside the navigation bar.

Now we're on our home screen. To open our list of apps, let's move to the bottom of the screen and swipe up with one finger.

Here they are. And next, let's find the News app. We'll scroll down our apps list till we find our News app, and here it is. We'll tap to open News.

Now that we have the News app open, let's scroll down the page to find an article we're interested in. This one looks interesting. We'll tap on the headline to open the article.

Great. Now let's check out Select to Speak. We'll use our accessibility button to get to it and when we're ready, we'll just tap it quickly.

Now in this phone we've set two different features to use the accessibility button, Select to Speak and magnification. So first, let's explore how to choose the one we want. We'll start by touching and holding the accessibility button like this.

When we touch and hold the accessibility button, we get a pop-up that lets us choose which feature we want to use the next time we tap the button. We want to use Select to Speak. So let's tap that.

Okay, the pop-up disappears, and now our phone knows that when we tap on the accessibility button, we want to use Select to Speak. And this setting will stay in place until we change it.

When we're ready to use Select to Speak we'll quickly tap the accessibility button once like this. And up pops a toolbar with a few icons. We have a stop button on the right and a play button to the left of that, and then we have a left arrow. If we tap this arrow, we can expand the toolbar to include more buttons.

You might notice that the buttons are pretty small and the arrow is really small but it's there on the left side of the toolbar. We'll explore these controls in just a minute.

After 10 seconds, if we haven't selected any text to speak, the toolbar gets small again like that.

Now let's try out Select to Speak on our news article. With the article open, let's tap the accessibility button and when the small toolbar appears, we have a few options. We can tap an area like the title of the article. A highlight will appear around this section and the text will be read out loud like this.

Select to Speak: 12 outdoor activities for when you need to get out of the house.

Narrator: When the reading is done, the toolbar disappears. Now let's try another technique. This time we'll read a section of the article so we'll scroll down a bit to see the text, and then we'll tap the accessibility button again. Now we can use our finger to touch and drag down the screen to decide how much of the article we want to select like this.

Select to Speak: Cooped up and bored indoors, yet simultaneously stumped over what will bust you from this rut? We feel you, which is why we compiled a list of go-to outdoor activities that will get you out of the house and provide much needed doses of sunlight, fresh air and feel-good vibes.

Narrator: And once again, the toolbar disappears when it's done. If we want to hear all the text that's showing on our screen, we can do that too. We'll just tap the accessibility button, and when the toolbar pops up we'll go straight to the play button and tap that. Then Select to Speak we'll read everything that's showing on the page.

Select to Speak: Navigate up, open navigation menu, self, sign up, cooped up in board indoors, yet simultaneously stumped over what will bust you from this rut.

Narrator: We'll let the phone continue reading with the volume turned down, and let's tap the left arrow in the toolbar to take a look at all the options here.

Now we can see the minus and plus icons to change the talking speed and we can pause the reading by tapping on the pause button like this.

Then we can play it again when we're ready, or we can always tap stop to end the reading and close the toolbar.

Select to Speak is a great way to have text read out loud, a little or a lot. And now you can use this feature whenever you want it. Thanks for joining me today. Until next time.