CliCk,Speak — Text-to-Speech for Firefox
October 14, 2009 by Paul Hamilton
I just came across a video I made a couple of years ago about CLiCk,Speak. I’d forgotten all about it. That has prompted me to repeat a post I wrote about CLiCk,Speak in June of 2008. The resolution isn’t great, but I think the video does a pretty good job of demonstrating CLiCk,Speak in action and of showing how to install it. I’ve embedded the video at the conclusion of the post.
CLiCk,Speak is a FREE tool that I believe needs to be available to ALL learners who have any reason to go online. It is a powerful tool, and one that is extremely easy to use for anyone who can use a mouse. The CLiCk,Speak toolbar installs with three buttons, as shown here.
In order to have text from a web page read aloud, simply place the cursor where you want to begin reading and click the green button. To stop reading aloud, click the red button. If you wish to read a selection of text, click the white button after selecting the desired text.
Under the Firefox ‘Tools’ Menu is an item called ‘CliCk,Speak Options’. You are able to adjust the reading rate and the pitch of the voice here.
As I repeat frequently, if schools are truly interested in supporting all learners, there is no excuse for continuing to insist on using Internet Explorer. If schools are really interested in trying to facilitate universal access, Firefox is a far superior browser because it is so much more accessible for countless learners. There is absolutely no monetary cost for using Firefox, but the potential to help learners with reading challenges is priceless!
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Click, Speak is great, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work on the older Macs that I have in my classroom. ‘m pretty sure you need to be running at least Leopard to get it to work without any real hassle.
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I just found out about that talking programm, and its so cool cause im learning german, and it gives me real opportunities to improve my understanding skills very quickly. Thanks for the tipps!