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Introduction
Welcome to Talklets 2.0!
Talklets aims to make the web talk. Not only that, but we aim to make it talk for EVERYONE! Whether you read faster than a BlueRay disc, or you're allergic to text, we want to give you the opportunity to listen to the web. If you would like to see any particular feature added to those already available and described below, please let us know.
If you want to talk to someone from our sales team contact us .
Topics by feature:
Mouse features
Double click:
double clicking your left mouse button will prompt the system to attempt to read from the word you clicked on.
Tip: if the word you wish to read from is a link or other 'clickable' element, simply click near it, but not on it, to avoid triggering the elements action (e.g. taking you to a new page).
Single click:
clicking your left mouse button once will pause the speech.
Tip: click the play button to resume. Or double click on the word left highlighted Tip: single and double clicking offer a quick and easy interface for many users abale to use a mouse, including those who are proficient readers, who simple want to sit back and listen, or listen while they do something else...
Point-Out-Loud:
Different sites may or may not impliment this feature differently. The default for many id that the central button on the floating bar will toggle this feature. Click it to mouse over elements and have their text read aloud immediately, with no other action needed. You can also access this feature by switching on HotKeys (F9 or Alt 1) and pressing M.
Drag selection highlighting:
click and drag your mouse across the page to select text. Then press play or the S key with HotKeys active, to play the text. Or Save to save it.
Right Click & Ctrl + Right Click:
Clicking the right button on the mouse will bring up additional features in a pop-up menu, such as diction look-up and mispronunciation submissions.
Show/hide button:
All sites using the Talklets bar interface must also have a Show Hide button. However that may look different on different sites. Clcicking it will show or hide the bar at the bottom of the page.
Keystrokes
Keystroke interfaces (HotKeys or keystoke navigation as they are often referred to) are intended for those users who are not primarily mouse users. Often these users are visually impaired, but not exclusively so. Please note that mouse features may get necessarily degraded when hot HotKey are on, for the interfaces not to clash.
To switch on HotKeys, press F9 or alt + 1. To hear a list of the current HotKeys, press F12 (or alt + 2)
Here is a list of the current HotKey features:
- F9: toggle keystroke navigation
- F12: list keystroke navigation
- S: Smart Story Finder; automatically find the main story on the page
- Q: silence speech
- M: Toggle the mouse over reader. When on, the text of the element the mouse is over will be read
- A: go to next link
- H: go to next heading
- L: go to next list
- I: go to next item in a list
- E: go to the next editable input. N.B. This will mean your key presses will enter text and not activate hotkeys. To activate hot key interaction again press F8
- B: next button
- F8: step out of input element, so access keys are re-enabled
- T: next table
- X: next div
- shift plus any of the above, except the Smart Story Finder: Reads the previous
- backspace: go to previous page
- full stop and shift: next element. Most element types will be read aloud
- comma and shift: previous element. Most element types will be read aloud
- Z: Zoom in
- SHIFT plus Z: zoom out
- V: read again
Tip: In HotKey mode, there is an 'audio fetch' noise that plays, whilst the system is getting your audio. If you hear this playing for an unusually long time, either you have selected a very large section of text, or you are have network problems. If you don't hear it playing, try stopping the player (Q) and trying again.
Tip: If a page is not easy to navigate, as, perhaps, it has no headings, you can try the Smart Story Finder. With HotKeys active, press Q to make sure the player is stopped, and press play, without selecting any text or elements. The system will attempt to find the main content on the page base on its structure and various metrics.
Tip: To open a Talklets enabled webpage without a screen reader;
On a Microsoft Windows machine a blind user can press the Windows Key and E, then alt and D, then type the URL of a Talklets enabled site, and Return. TaDa!
Basic Controls
Much like many media players, Talklets provides play/pause/resume/stop features. However Talklets also has additional behavious you should know about...
Pressing the play buttonb (S HotKey):
If no text is selected and the player is not reading, pressing play will trigger the Smart Story Finder, and plays the found content. If text is selected, pressing play will trigger the reading of that text. If the player is reading, pressing play will pause the player (as will single clicking anywhere on the page). If the player has been paused, pressing Play will resume the player.
Stopping (Q HotKey) will reset the player.
Save to mp3 behaves similarly, but downloads the audio as a file which can then be stored local or on a device.
If no text is selected, pressing Save will trigger the Smart Story Finder, and download the found content as an mp3 audio file. If text is selected, Save will download the selected text content as an mp3 audio file.
Smart Story Finder
As far as we know, Talklets' Smart Story Finder is unique amongst AT solutions. The idea is that, rather too often, finding the main content on a page can be a pain for many users, but can be done pretty quickly and accurately by a machine, even if the content structure is 'less than perfect'. Even well structured CMS/template-based websites can become difficult to navigate by visually impaired users, simply by having a very large number of links added to a particular content region, for example. What SSF can do, is offer another means of finding your content quickly. Just press Stop, then Play (Q then S HotKeys), and wait for you audio. There should be a pause while the content is found and processed, then you may hear the audio fetch whilst your content is actually fetched. The pause will be longer, the larger the page is.
Highlighting
The system attempts to offer the best/most useful highlighting features it can, based on which browser you are using, and whether or not you are using HotKeys, or Point Out Loud, as well as the structure of the page and content being read. Where possible and appropriate, it will highlight the words being read, as they are read, on sites that have not chosen to disable this feature. The highlighting colour can be selected via the bar. Or other API web interface (e.g. buttons or links the site has chosen to use as the interface).
Zoom
Some site choose to offer our zoom features. Whilst we attempt to improve on the browser's facilities were possible, it is worth noting that most browsers offer zoom features. Try Ctrl + to zoom in, and Ctrl - to zoom out.
The Talklets Zoom is triggered by clicking the zoom buttons, or Z and Shift Z HotKey.
Download to mp3
Save to mp3 behaves similarly to Play, but downloads the audio as a file which can then be stored local or on a device such as an iPod®. If no text is selected, pressing Save will trigger the Smart Story Finder, and download the found content as an mp3 audio file. If text is selected, Save will download the selected text content as an mp3 audio file.
Dictionary
Right click on a word anywhere in the page text, and the system will attempt to look it up in the Wikitionary database and read the returned result. Many foreign words are in the database, allowing some translation functionality.
Pronunciation corrections
TTS is never 100% accurate at pronouncing words, but we want to get it as good as possible. Buy letting users submit mispronounced words, we can fix them at the server, so you don't have to. Just right click on a word and then click the link. We'll do the rest. We hope to have a keyboard interface for this feature as soon as we can.
Topic by user
We don't put you in a box, but if you fit one, more than another, here's stuff you could find useful...
Severely visually impaired and blind users
HotKeys features are designed to allow content navigation and form filling. While not yet as fully featured as some installed applications, we hope that all necessary features are present. If you would like to see a new feature added, please do let us know.
Features of significant importance, are likely to be HotKeys and the Smart Story Finder.
Partially sighted users and users with fading eyesight
We recommend trying the Point-out-loud features, which allow users to move the mouse over an element and hear its text spoken aloud. Also the Zoom features may be useful.
Dyslexic users and other who struggle to read
We recommend trying the Point-out-loud features, which allow users to move the mouse over an element and hear its text spoken aloud. Also the Zoom features may be useful.
Reading selected text may also be a comfortable interface to use. As well as double clicking to read. We also highly recommend using the word by word highlighting.
Foreign language users
We recommend trying the Point-out-loud features. Also looking up words in the dictionary, by right clicking on them and clicking the first link in the menu that appears.
Proficient readers
Why not quickly double click on the start of a story or passage you want to listen to, and open a new tab or window in your browser. You can carry on browsing the web, checking your email, whatever you like, whilst listening to your chosen content. Or download articles to your mp3 player, to listen on the go.
FAQs
- Can Blind people really use this? YES! :) Maybe not for all sites. But for most well designed sites, users with no vision at all can navigate the content well enough to use.
- Doesn't this interfere with screen readers? No. Not unless you make it. Talklets is opt-in. So its off by default. Users who have screen readers switched on, are unlikely to want to switch on another. If they do by accident somehow, it is easily switched back off. It can not fundamentally interfere with the screen reader e.g. at a registry level, because its not installed locally.
- Whats the point? Blind users can't open a browser without a screen reader. Apart from the fact that Talklets is for everyone, yes you can. On a Microsoft Windows machine a blind user can press the Windows Key and E, then alt and D, then type the URL of a Talklets enabled site, and Return. Job done!
- I can't hear anything. Whats the problem? Check the base-requirements. Javascript and Flash 6 or later need to be enabled on your compatible browser. You also need an Internet connection. Its worth noting that the reason is often something obvious, such as the headphones/speakers being unplugged.
- What do I need? A modern browser with Flash 6, and sound (speaker or headphones). See the tech specs for fuller and most recent details.
- FireFox tells me its trying to install something. Why? Sounds like you need Flash. Most machines have this installed already. Let it install it if you want to use Talklets.
- I don't see anything. Where's the bar? You may need to find the show/hide button to show the bar. If your stuggling to find it, try pressing the following: Alt + 1, then alt + 1 again. Some sites chose not to use the bar, and instead offer different buttons or links to use as the interface. Others may even only offer a subset of the features mentioned in this document.
- Why is the highlighter not highlighting everything? Certain elements of a sites markup (the HTML or similar source code that the site is made from) may not take kindly to being highlighted, so we err on the side of caution, and try to only highlight content we know will behave. Also, due to the web-based nature of the system, it may occasionally loose its way, and highlight the wrong word. It will then use algorithms to self correct. We are of course continually working to improve on these and any other short comings.
- Does it work with my browser? Probably. Check our site for a list of supported browsers (though it is likely to work on many that are not listed). As a rule of thumb, we try to make all critical features available to the present and previous versions of Internet Explorer, Safari and FireFox
- What about PDFs and Word Documents? We're working on it. But in the meantime, you could convert them to HTML.
