A Brief on Screen Reader and Speech Synthesizer

Your gadget can read to you what they have on screen. Let’s explore further. Since 1986, this assistive technology has been developed to help the visually impaired to operate computer, and yeah, it is called screen reader.

Screen reader is a software that translate texts and elements (e.g. Graphics, Links, headings) and input (e.g. typing, mouse) to voice output through speech synthesizer and braille. In short, screen reader helps to read out and braille out whatever that appears on the screen. Speech synthesizer on the other hand is an artificial voice production that helps to convert text to speech output. It can be used by screen reader or other software/hardware for various purposes, such as how  Professor Stephen Hawking used speech synthesis technology to share his mind with us.

Do you know? Hatsune Miku is a singing synthesizer. The virtual pop star’s voice is provided by Saki Fujita, a singer and voice actor in Anime. You can read more about Miku, the Virtual Pop Star here. 

Just like any product, Screen reader has its own brand. Some of the major player include JAWs for Windows by Freedom Scientific and NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) by NV Access. Each screen reader is pre-equipped with a speech synthesizer, or text to speech engine. However the speech synthesizer can be purchase and added for better reading or for other language. For instance, NVDA can make good use of Microsoft API as their speech synthesizer. In a non-technical term, changing the speech synthesizer is like changing a reader for your computer / phone. Some reader may sound good at certain language, thus changing them to suit different purpose is a good practice.

If you are curious, the following screen reader is equipped with the following synthesizer by default.

Screen Reader	Default Synthesizer
JAWs and Windows Eyes	Eloquence
NVDA	eSpeak
Microsoft Narrator	Windows API/Core Voices
Talkback for Android	Google TTS

For me, they are 3 ways to evaluate how good a speech synthesizer is, which is through 1) how does it perform in high speed reading, 2) how clear the reading is, and 3) how natural (human sounding) it is while reading.

Finally, for you who are curious on how to activate your screen reader in your device, please

1.       Press Ctrl + Win + Enter to turn on Narrator for windows PC

2.       In your android phone, Go to setting > accessibility > Vision > Talkback (Please note that some device may have different directory of turning on talkback)

And do Check out this post to activate your default screen reader in your Apple iPhone