Spoken Content Feature

Today, let's look at how to have our Mac read to us with a cool feature called Spoken Content. Before we jump in, let's talk about what Spoken Content is and how it's different from other voice-related features on our Mac. There's our Siri Smart Assistant, which lets us ask questions aloud and get spoken answers.

Siri: I'm here.

Narrator: There's the VoiceOver screen reader, which speaks all the visible info on our screen, like buttons, text, menu options, and icons.

VoiceOver: Welcome to VoiceOver. VoiceOver speaks descriptions of items on the screen and can be used to control the computer using only your keyboard.

Narrator: And then there's Spoken Content, which reads aloud only the text we ask it to read. It's perfect for reading those long emails, documents, and articles on webpages without making our eyes tired.

Spoken Content: Hello, my name is Samantha. I am an American English voice.

Narrator: We'll find Spoken Content in the Accessibility menu and to get there, we'll start at the Apple menu. So let's click on the Apple icon in the top left corner of the screen. From the menu that opens, we'll select System Settings or on your Mac it might say, System Preferences. Great. Our Settings window opens and we'll select Accessibility in the left column.

From the Accessibility options that open on the right, we'll find Spoken Content right here under the Vision heading. Every Mac is a little different, so the options available on yours might look a little different from what we see here. If you don't see Spoken Content on your Mac, check out the Speech section in the System Preferences to find what's available to you.

We'll click on Spoken Content right here. And it opens right up.

Now, let's find out how it works. Our first two options, let us choose the language and voice we'd like to use. Below our System Voice option, we have sliders to adjust our speaking rate and volume. We'll leave things as they are, but be sure and check out the resources section for information on how to adjust your max voice to sound just right for you.

Now, let's move down to the four features we can use to read aloud what's on our screen. Each of these has a toggle switch and a button to the right that opens its own window of settings. We won't explore the options to fine-tune each of these features today, but you can use them to customize the different settings just the way you want.

Our first feature is Speak announcements, which is a really handy feature for alerting us to notifications. Sometimes when we're using the screen magnifier, we might not see the part of the screen where an announcement pops up, but when Speak announcements is switched on, our Mac will read these announcements out loud so we won't miss them. Let's select our toggle switch to turn it on.

And remember, if you'd like to explore the available settings for this feature, click on the button to the right of the toggle switch. We just so happen to have a reminder set, but since we're focused on our settings menu, we might not notice the notification at the top of our screen.

Spoken Content: Alert from reminders.

Narrator: The Speak announcements feature gives us a spoken alert to go along with the visual alert we might otherwise miss. With the default setting, Speak announcements will say the notification out loud if we haven't noticed and dismissed it after 20 seconds, or we can change that timing in our list of options.

Below Speak announcements, we have Speak selection, which will read aloud the text we select. This is great for those long documents and emails that can be a strain on the eyes. Let's turn this switch on and see how it works. We'll go to an open document and now, we'll have Spoken Content read it out loud. And to do that, we'll use the shortcut pressing the option and escape keys to get started.

Spoken Content: To-do list. Pick up dry cleaning at 3:00 PM. Grocery shopping. See grocery list. Book Club at 6:00 PM.

Narrator: We also press the option and escape key to stop and that worked perfectly. Spoken Content read the document out loud and it even highlighted the words while they were being read.

On this Mac, we've chosen blue as our highlight color, and you can check out the resources section below this workshop to find info on how to set the highlight color that's right for you. We might also notice a small box popped up on the screen when Spoken Content started reading. This is the controller, which gives us options to control the speaking while it's happening. We can pause and play, slow down or speed up and more, which is really handy when we're reading longer documents.

Back at the Settings window for Spoken Content. Let's look at two more options we can select. Speak item under the pointer and Speak typing feedback. When we turn on Speak item under the pointer, Spoken Content reads aloud all the words beneath the pointer as we move around the screen, whether they're button labels, menu items, text, or anything else. Let's try it.

We'll select the switch to turn it on. And now, let's move our pointer to the help button down in the bottom right corner of the window

Spoken Content: Help.

Narrator: And just like that, the name of the button is spoken. This setting makes it handy to listen for the names on buttons and other controls instead of trying to read the fine print. And once again, we can adjust the delay so we can decide how long we should pause the pointer before our Mac reads something out loud.

The last option for Spoken Content at the bottom of the settings window is Speak typing feedback. When this is turned on, we'll hear what we type read out loud. Let's see how it works.

Spoken Content: Speak typing feedback checked.

Narrator: We'll go back to our open document.

Spoken Content: Document one.

Narrator: And now, let's move to the bottom of our text.

Spoken Content: New line.

Narrator: We'll type...

Spoken Content: Capital T-H-I-S, This. I-S, is A, a T-E-S-T, test space.

Narrator: Notice we heard each character we typed, and when we pressed the space bar or a punctuation key, we heard the full word too, but we also have other options. Back in our Spoken Content window.

Spoken Content: System settings, desktop.

Narrator: Let's select the options button for typing feedback.

Spoken Content: Show detail one.

Narrator: Here's where we can customize what we will hear read back to us or echoed when we type. Let's select the switch to turn echo characters off.

Spoken Content: Echo characters checked. Unchecked.

Narrator: Now, moving back to our open document.

Spoken Content: Document one.

Narrator: Let's type a bit more.

Spoken Content: Hadley is the best.

Narrator: This time, we heard only the words we typed because we made that change in our list of options. Wow, Spoken Content adds a whole new level to using the Mac. It's a great way to have our Mac read text out loud, which can really help to reduce eye strain throughout our day. We can personalize it with a voice we like at the speech rate that works for us, and if we want to hear what we're typing or what our pointer is pointing at, we can do that too. Thanks for joining me today to learn about Spoken Content. Until next time.