Macintosh OS X (text to speech & speech recognition)

Macintosh OS X has the ability to "speak" any text and "recognize" spoken words and translate them into application commands. These functions are controlled from the System Preferences (Click system preferences in the icon dock) - Speech (Click Speech icon in the System panel).

The Office for Disability Services can also provide additional assistance in the Assitive Technology area.

There are three tab settings in the speech panel.

1. Speech Recognition - From this panel you can turn on the ability for the OS to "listen" for application commands by clicking the "Apple Speakable Items" to on. Once this is done a Microphone icon appears on the desktop with the word Esc. By default pressing the Esc key will activate the microphone to "listen" for a command. To set the sensitivity of the microphone click on the "Volume" button and adjust it so it can recognize the word phrases provided to test recognition. Click on the helpful tips to find out more about how command speech recognition works.
   
   NOTE: Microphones come as a standard accessory with Macintosh computers, and some Macintosh computers require the specific type of microphone that was shipped with the computer. If your microphone does not seem to be responding to the volume control as it should, make sure you are using supplied microphone that came with your computer. Laptops generally have the microphone built into the computer and did not come with an external microphone.
   
2. Default Voice - Allows various "computer voices" to be selected (Male, Female, funny, etc.)
   
3. Spoken User Interface - Selects the ability to have the operating system speak systems alerts if they occur. The option to speak the text under the mouse to be spoken is available under the "Other spoken items", as well as a few other options.

Spoken command (Speech Recognition) Example After turning on the "Apple Speakable Items" option described above to have the Macintosh respond to specific OS or application commands press the Esc key and speak a command such as "Open Sherlock".

Text to speech Example From within an application such as TextEdit, highlight the text you want spoken and click on Edit, pull down to speech, and select Start Speaking. If no text is highlighted the entire document will be read until you select Stop Speaking under the Speech selection. In Microsoft Word, go to the View pull-down menu and select Speech Toolbar, and use the speech options that toolbar provides.