Windows Narrator: Settings

Ricky: Hello, my name is Ricky Enger, and today we're going to check out our Narrator settings. We'll use both our Narrator navigation modes, Narrator views, and scan mode to do this. If you're not familiar with Narrator views or scan mode, we've got you covered because each of these modes has its own awesome little workshop to get you up to speed. Okay, so we've opened Narrator with our Control + Windows + Enter shortcut key and in order to explore our Narrator settings, we'll need to open that section of our Windows settings.

There's a way to do this that takes several steps. We can open our Windows settings with the Windows key + I as an indigo shortcut, and then navigate to our Ease of Access section, and then to our Narrator settings under the Vision option. That's a lot of steps, though. It sure would be nice if there were a single keystroke to get us there, and luckily, there is. We'll just press Control + Windows + N.

Narrator: N, settings window, scan off. Use Narrator, turn on Narrator, toggle switch, on.

Ricky: And there we go. We're in our Narrator settings, and we're focused on our first option, which is used to turn Narrator on or off. It's a toggle switch, which means that each time we activate it, it will flip to the opposite of what it is now. We can activate it with our Spacebar or our Narrator + Enter key, but let's leave it alone for now since we really don't wanna turn Narrator off.

Now, we notice when we opened this window that Narrator says scan off. So, that means we're navigating with Narrator views right now. Let's move to our next item with Narrator + right arrow.

Narrator: Link, open Narrator home.

Ricky: Cool, that text describes exactly what this link does. Let's move forward again with Narrator + right arrow.

Narrator: Link, view the complete guide to Narrator online.

Ricky: And again, this tells us exactly what will happen if we activate this link. We can read our Narrator guide, which is full of all sorts of really useful information. Now, navigating with Narrator views is nice, but let's switch over to scan mode. It's so easy using scan mode to just press our arrow keys to explore this window quickly. So, we'll activate scan mode with Narrator + Spacebar.

Narrator: Scan.

Ricky: All right, we're in scan mode now, so let's press down arrow.

Narrator: Heading level two, start-up options.

Ricky: Wow, this is great. Our settings are grouped under headings, so we can move quickly through the different categories of settings that we have. We're in start-up options now, so let's press down arrow to see what's here.

Narrator: Allow the shortcut key to start Narrator checkbox checked.

Ricky: And down arrow again.

Narrator: Press the Windows logo key + Control + Enter to turn Narrator on or off.

Ricky: Nice, we have our control, and then we have text after it describing what it does. Now, scan mode has all these nifty little shortcuts besides just using our down arrow key, so let's use a couple of those here in our settings window. First, let's move to the next form field in our window. We'll do that just by pressing F.

Narrator: Start Narrator after sign-in for me checkbox unchecked.

Ricky: Yay, this setting tells Windows to automatically load Narrator for us as soon as we sign in, so we don't have to press Control + Windows + Enter to turn it on. Now, Narrator is really powerful, which means it also has a ton of settings that we can use to make it behave exactly the way we want it to. We won't touch on every setting in this window since we know we can come back at any time and explore the whole thing just by using what we learned with Narrator views and scan mode.

So, we'll just take a look at a few of the settings that we might wanna change. First, we're listening to Narrator all the time, so it's important that we're comfortable with how it sounds. We're in scan mode, so let's jump to our next collection of settings by pressing H to move to the next heading.

Narrator: Personalize Narrator's voice, heading level two.

Ricky: Nice, that's just what we're looking for, so let's press down arrow.

Narrator: Choose a voice, Microsoft David, English, United States combo box collapsed.

Ricky: All right, so let's see what other voices are available. Now, we could do this while we're in scan mode, but it's actually a lot easier to exit scan mode here while we're focused on the combo box. And then, we'll use our down arrow key to move through the options in this control. So, we'll turn scan mode off using Narrator + Spacebar.

Narrator: Scan off.

Ricky: And now, since scan mode is off, our down arrow will actually change the options in this control instead of moving to the next item in the window. So, we'll press down arrow.

Female Narrator: Microsoft Zira, English, United States, two of five, selected.

Ricky: She sounds great, but she's option two of five. That means there are more voices to explore here, so we'll press down arrow again.

Male Narrator: Microsoft Mark, English, United States, three of five, selected.

Ricky: Well, Mark sounds nice, too. Now, there are two other voices here, but they're just slightly different versions of Microsoft David and Zira, so we won't check them out today. We'll move back up to David for now by pressing our up arrow key a couple of times.

Female Narrator: Microsoft Zira, English, United States, two of five.

Narrator: Microsoft David, English, United Sates, one of five, selected.

Ricky: And there we go. Let's continue using Narrator views for now and navigate to the next item with Narrator + right arrow.

Narrator: Link, add more voices.

Ricky: Here's where we'll go if we want voices for other languages or dialects. Let's keep going forward with Narrator + right arrow.

Narrator: Change voice speed slider at 10.

Ricky: Awesome, we can make Narrator speak slower or faster. We'll use our up arrow to go faster.

Narrator: 11, 12, 13.

Ricky: And our down arrow to slow thing down.

Narrator: 12, 11, 10.

Ricky: All right, Narrator + right arrow to move forward again.

Narrator: Press the Narrator key + Plus or Narrator + Minus to change voice speed.

Ricky: So, that means we can change our voice speed at any time from any window just by using our Narrator key with plus or minus. That's pretty convenient. We'll move forward again with Narrator + right arrow.

Narrator: Change voice pitch slider at 10.

Ricky: So, we can use our up arrow here to increase pitch.

Narrator: 11, 12, 13.

Ricky: And we hear that the pitch is increasing. If we wanna make poor David sound like he inhaled helium, we can take this all the way up to 20. But we'll save that bit of fun for another day. Let's go ahead and move our pitch back down to 10.

Narrator: 12, 11, 10.

Ricky: Now, there are lots more great settings for us to explore later, but let's activate scan mode again and move to our next section. So, Narrator + Spacebar.

Narrator: Scan.

Ricky: And now H to move to the next heading.

Narrator: Change what you hear when reading and interacting, heading level two.

Ricky: There's important stuff here that we can come back and explore later. But for now, we'll move to the next section with H.

Narrator: Change what you hear when typing, heading level two.

Ricky: Cool, and again there are lots of other settings in this section. But for now, let's check out the first two. So, we'll press our down arrow key.

Narrator: Hear letters, numbers, and punctuation as you type checkbox checked.

Ricky: So, this tells us that every time we press a letter, number, or a punctuation mark we'll hear it spoken. That's really awesome. Especially when we're just becoming familiar with typing and using a screen reader. That feedback is so helpful. If we don't wanna hear this information, we'll just press our Spacebar and uncheck this box. All right, let's press our down arrow key one more time.

Narrator: Hear words as you type checkbox checked.

Ricky: So, when this checkbox is checked, we'll hear the word we've typed each time we press the Spacebar or a punctuation mark at the end of the word. Just like with our previous control, we can press Spacebar to turn that off. So, these two checkboxes give us a great way to customize what we hear. We could hear words and not characters, we could hear characters but not words, or we could just check both boxes and hear characters and words. So, that's a quick look at just a few of the settings we can use to make Narrator more comfortable for us to use. Narrator is cool with whichever choices we make here, and it will remember those choices each time we start Narrator once we're signed in. That's pretty awesome, right? I'm Ricky Enger, and I'm glad you could spend a little time with me today exploring settings in Windows Narrator.