BrowseAloud

Visitors to the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) website may listen to the content by using BrowseAloud.

BrowseAloud is a free tool which is used to speech enable a website. It may make using the Internet easier for people who have:

To read more about BrowseAloud please visit their website at www.BrowseAloud.com or you can download the software and begin using BrowseAloud right away by following the guidance below.

Full details on how to download the BrowseAloud software can be found on the BrowseAloud website support page.

The software needed to run BrowseAloud is available free of charge and can be downloaded from the following link:

Once BrowseAloud is installed, you will see a circular icon in the system tray in the bottom right corner of your computer screen.

You can change the voice used by BrowseAloud to read text and you can control what you want read aloud. You can do this using the Speech tab in the BrowseAloud Options dialog box, which is shown below.

To open the BrowseAloud Options:

The BrowseAloud Options dialog box is displayed.

By moving through the appropriate tabs within the main settings box, elements such as speech and pronunciation can be altered to suit individual needs.

If you are not happy with the new settings, click on the Program tab and select the Reset all defaults button to revert back to the original settings.

If you click on this button, all of the options you have selected in the BrowseAloud Options dialog box will be replaced by the default settings.

As well as the on-screen toolbar, all BrowseAloud functionality is accessible via the Keyboard.

Use the Alt+Tab keys to select "BrowseAloud 6 Toolbar" you may then use the Tab key to move along the buttons, and the Space Bar to activate the buttons.

There are also access Hot Keys for each button. Hover the mouse over each button and the Hot Key and a brief description will appear.

BrowseAloud also allows you to use your keyboard to start and stop speech. Simply press the Ctrl key on your keyboard to start speech and then press it again to stop speech.

If required, you can change the key(s) you need to press to control speech. You can do this using the Customise Speech tab in the BrowseAloud Options dialog box.

If you have difficulty using a mouse, you can use MouseKeys which allow you to use the numeric keypad to control the mouse pointer.

For more information on using MouseKeys, please refer to the Microsoft Windows online help site.

You can instruct BrowseAloud to read text aloud on web pages. You can also instruct it to read aloud PDF and Microsoft Word documents that accompany web pages.

There are two ways in which you can read text aloud. You can read it aloud using:

When you click on a link to a PDF document BrowseAloud will ask you if you would like BrowseAloud to read it.  Click “Yes” and the PDF document will open and you may use the BrowseAloud Toolbar as you would for a normal web page.

Please Note: The latest version of BrowseAloud will only read PDF documents in Acrobat Reader 9.  

If you do not have Acrobat Reader 9 installed on your computer then you can download it from the following link:

It is not necessary to stop BrowseAloud.  You can continue to perform other tasks on your computer, while BrowseAloud runs in the background.  However, you may not want BrowseAloud to start immediately each time your computer starts.

If this is the case, you can deselect the Always start BrowseAloud when my computer starts check box in the Program tab of the BrowseAloud Options dialog box and then manually start BrowseAloud when you need to use it.

You can also stop BrowseAloud at any time by right-clicking on the icon in the system tray and selecting Exit BrowseAloud from the popup menu.

If you have any questions relating to the use of BrowseAloud then the BrowseAloud website has a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) which you may find useful.