Welcome to Speak & See

Welcome to Speak & See. Speak & See is designed to help you learn to understand spoken English, read English websites and documents, and write English.

Speak & See will work with any application or software program on your PC. The highly-visible Speak & See Toolbar can be locked in one place, docked to the top of the screen or can be left to float around the screen as suits you best.

Speak & See OverviewSpeak & See provides an easily-readable floating toolbar that will lock onto any Windows software application you have open and active. You can easily add or remove buttons from this toolbar. The full list of buttons is described in the next section.

The speech features of Speak & See are powerful. One of the key benefits of Speak & See is that it can read back menus, button texts and tooltips, as well as any text displayed on screen. The program will also instantly read back any text that you select using your mouse. It will also read back characters, words and sentences as they are typed.

Speak & See Toolbar

Speak & See Toolbar ButtonsThe Speak & See Toolbar has a number of clear buttons to control various features. Buttons that you don't want to use regularly can easily be removed from the toolbar, by simply clicking on the Settings button, and changing the View Settings.

Play and Stop Buttons

To read Microsoft Word documents click your mouse pointer to where you want to start reading from. Click the green Play button to start to read back text from any Microsoft Word document using the pre-selected text-to-speech voice.

Click on Stop to halt the text read back. Clicking the mouse will also stop the reading.

By clicking on the Advanced Speech Settings button you can choose to highlight in Microsoft Word the words or sentences as they are spoken, as well as control the style of speaking.

In other (non-Word) software applications such as web pages, e-mails etc. all you need to do is highlight (select) the text you would like read back by using your mouse. When you have finished selecting, it will read the text back immediately. You can also press the green Play button to replay the text.

Homophones Button

When working in Microsoft Word, click your mouse pointer somewhere within the paragraph you would like to check for homophones. Clicking the Homophone Button will highlight all the homophones in that paragraph. Homophones are words that sound alike but are different in spelling, meaning or origin. An example of a pair of homophones is blew and blue.

Check Button

Speak & See contains an integrated word and document checking Feature. We have concentrated on bringing together the Word spell checker, thesaurus and a separate homophone checker into one simple Check Button.

Save Button

It is possible to convert the text in an open Microsoft Word document or web page into an audio or video file to save on your computer. The save to audio function can also be easily accessed from the toolbar and within Speech Settings.

Extras Button

The Extras button provides a handy link allowing you to expand the software with additional content.

Settings Button

The Settings Button brings up the Settings Menu featuring the main setting areas: Speech, View, Prediction, Check and Scan (Plus version only).

Speak & See Settings

Speak & See's Speech, View, Check Word & Keyboard and Look Up settings can all be modified from their own menu "tabs" within the Speak & See Settings Menu. The Settings Button is always present on the Speak & See Toolbar.

Speech FeaturesSpeak & See's ability to make the computer talk is one of its key innovative features. Speak & See uses ScanSoft's Realspeak voices, which are high quality, human synthesised voices. Speak & See may also work with any other text to speech synthesiser voices that may be installed on your computer.

With Speak & See you have the following extensive range of speech facilities:

Make Microsoft Word documents speak by simply clicking the cursor at the point

you want to start, and clicking the Play Button. or .The text can also be highlighted as it is spoken back.

Make Web Pages Speak by hovering your mouse or simply pressing the Play Button [or F7].

Have any text from any PC program spoken back instantly once selected by your mouse. Great for proofing any text from word processors and listening to your e-mails.

Echo back letters, words or sentences as they are typed into your computer in most applications. Great for positive confirmation that you have typed what you wanted to!

Automatically hear many menu items, tooltips and "objects" spoken by hovering the mouse over the item.

Make audio and video files from Word documents or web pages for listening to/watching later on your PC. Or you could transfer the audio/video files from your computer to a portable device. (Using separate portable audio player software).

At any time you can stop the computer talking by pressing the key or clicking the mouse button.

Many of these speaking features can be turned off if they are not helpful to you using the Speech Settings and Advanced Speech Settings screens.

Making Word Documents Speak

Open Microsoft Word and open the Word document you would like to have spoken. Alternatively, type some text.

Click your mouse at the place in the document where you want the speaking to start.

Press the green Play Button or . The text will be spoken back to you, and also highlighted.

Read how to change the Highlight Settings.

Using Ctrl+Hover

In Speech Settings, ticking the "Speak word on Ctrl+hover" box will enable you hear one particular word at a time. To hear the word, place your mouse over it and hold down the

key. Speak & See will then speak the word.

Using Stop After Sentence

In Speech Settings, ticking the "Stop after sentence" box will set Speak & See to only read one sentence at a time. To read the next sentence you will need to press the Play button again.

If you do not have "Stop after sentence" checked, you can also read the next sentence

using Ctrl and F7 .

Using Arrow (Cursor) Keys

When you move around the text in any text area, including Microsoft Word, using the up/down/left/right arrows on your keyboard (instead of your mouse) you can choose whether Speak & See speaks by ticking "Arrow Keys".

When moving the up or down arrows, Speak & See will speak the full line of text. In this way, you can have a document spoken to you line by line, by using the down arrow key.

Pressing the Ctrl and left or right arrow will speak the next word from where the cursor is.

Pressing the left/right arrow will speak the next character in the word.

Pressing the Shift and down arrow to select a number of lines of text will allow that block of lines to be spoken.

Making Web Pages SpeakSpeak & See allows most web pages to be spoken back easily, especially when using Internet Explorer 6 or above.

With Internet Explorer, load up the web page that you would like to have spoken and open Speak & See.

If you press the green Play button or , the web page will be spoken from "top to bottom" in an order that is related to the way the web page is built.

If you click your mouse at the beginning of the web page article that you would like to have spoken back, a "virtual cursor" will appear. See below:

Pressing the green Play Button or will start the read back, and the sentence will highlight in your chosen colour.

Speak & See will carry on reading the web page until you press Stop or .

An alternate way of making hyperlinks and text in web pages speak within Internet Explorer is to just "hover the mouse" over the text. This will also work in Mozilla Firefox.

If you don't use Internet Explorer, or the web pages aren't speaking, simply select the text with your mouse, press Ctrl+C and then press the Play button. Speak & See will read anything that you select with your mouse.

There are some settings in Advanced Speech Settings that can control the speech when mouse selects the text, and the speech in Internet Explorer when hovering the mouse.

Making PDF Files SpeakUsing Accessible PDF reader

Accessible PDF is a free extra for Speak & See which allows you to import PDF documents into a readable format. To read accessible PDFs, click on the Extras button on the Speak & See toolbar and choose "Accessible PDF". Accessible PDF will now run and you can choose to open your PDF file. Once opened, the PDF can be displayed in either plain text or web page layout. Speak & See can then be used to read out the text.

Speak text from PDF when Mouse Selects

Speak & See will speak back any text that you select with your mouse from an accessible PDF file. To do this, select or block some text with your mouse. The text should be spoken back immediately once you let go of your mouse. If you would like to have the text spoken again, press the green Play button on the Speak & See toolbar. With some PDF files, you may have to copy (CTRL+C) the text first, before pressing the Play button. Some PDF files will be secure or inaccessible, so we suggest using the Scan from PDF method above.

Using Ctrl+C and the Play button

In Speech Settings, ticking the "Speak word on Ctrl+Hover" box will enable you hear one particular word at a time. To hear the word, place your mouse over it and hold down the Ctrl key. Speak & See will then speak the word.

Making Other PC Programs SpeakSpeak when Mouse Selects

Speak & See will speak back any text that you select with your mouse. To do this, select or block some text with your mouse.

The text will be spoken back immediately once you let go of your mouse. If you would

like to have the text spoken again, press the green Play Button or on the Speak & See toolbar and it will repeat the text.

If you don't want the text to be spoken when you select, you can turn it off from within

the Advanced Speech Settings .

To turn off the speech when selecting with the mouse, uncheck the "Speak when mouse selects" tick box.

When this is turned off, you can still have text spoken back when selected. However, to hear the text you need to copy the text (press Ctrl and C) and press the green Play

button or on the Speak & See toolbar.

To stop the speech at anytime, click the mouse, press Stop or .

Speak word on Ctrl+Hover

Ticking the "Speak word on Ctrl+hover" box in Speech Settings will enable you hear one particular word at a time. To hear the word, place your mouse over it and hold down the Ctrl key. Speak & See will then speak the word.

Below is a list of common applications Ctrl+hover will work with:

Internet Explorer Microsoft Office (including Word and Outlook) Mozilla Firefox Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 NotePad Windows Mail/Outlook Express

Speech Settings

The main Speech Settings screen allows you to choose the voice that speaks the text back to you. You can also set the speed of speech and volume for this voice. Speak & See is supplied with ScanSoft's Realspeak Voices, but it may also work with other voices installed on your computer. This will include the Microsoft system voices such as Sam, Mary, Mike or Anna.

Voice

Speak & See installs the ScanSoft Realspeak Voices as standard. Clicking the down arrow next to the currently loaded voice will show you the range of voices available to be used with Speak & See.

Speed & Volume

Change the speed and volume by moving the slider bars left and right.

Test Button

When you change the voice setting you can test the new setting prior to clicking OK. Loading a new voice takes a second or two, so please be patient! After it is loaded, you can then test it. It will say "This is a Test" in the newly selected voice.

Pronounce Button

The Pronounce Button opens the text to speech pronunciation list. Whilst the Realspeak Voices are incredibly accurate, there are times when it may not pronounce words quite as you like. This could be, for example, names of people or place names. The Pronounce tool will "force" the voice to pronounce something the way you want. You can do this by taking a "sounds like" approach. Read the Pronounce Settings Help to Learn More.

Save Audio File Button

It is possible to convert the text in an open Microsoft Word document or web page into an audio file to save on your computer. The voice used for the conversion is the Realspeak Voice selected at the time. You can then listen to this audio file later, email it to someone, or transfer it to a portable audio player using the software provided with that device.

Read the Save Text to Audio section to see the step by step guide to making the conversion.

Advanced Speech Button

There are a number of Advanced Speech Settings.

Pause Between Words

Ticking the Pause Between Words box will deliberately separate each word when the computer is speaking the text. This may help with clarity for certain users. If it is not

ticked, the speech should flow naturally, and will take account of punctuation, certain abbreviations and other text details.

Stop after sentence

Ticking the "Stop after sentence" box will set Speak & See to only read one sentence at a time in Microsoft Word. To read the next sentence you will need to press the Play button again.

Speak word on Ctrl+hover

Ticking the "Speak word on Ctrl+hover" box will enable you hear one particular word at a time. To hear the word, place your mouse over it and hold down the Ctrl key. Speak & See will then speak the word.

Below is a list of common applications Ctrl+hover will work with:

Internet Explorer Microsoft Office (including Word and Outlook) Mozilla Firefox Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 NotePad Windows Mail/Outlook Express

Text To Speech Pronounce

Whilst the Realspeak Voices are incredibly accurate, there are times when it doesn't pronounce things quite as you like. These could be, for example, names of people or place names. Hence we built a tool to modify the voice to pronounce something the way you want. You can do this by taking a "sounds like" approach.

To make a pronunciation list addition, type in the word you want to change the pronunciation of in the "Word to Replace" box. Pressing the Test Button allows you to hear how the selected voice pronounces the word.

Type how you think the word should sound in the New Pronunciation box. You can test the new pronunciation by pressing the Test Button prior to adding. You can use single words or phrases. Once you are happy that it sounds acceptable, press the Add/Replace Button to add it to the pronunciation list. Whenever the original text is seen it will be pronounced according to your replacement text.

Advanced Speech Settings

The Advanced Speech Settings screen allows you to control the amount and type of speech that the computer reads to you. You can also modify the synchronised highlighting type and colour that occurs when Microsoft Word documents are spoken by the computer.

Speak When Mouse Selects

Speak & See will speak back anything you select with your mouse. This means that it will read virtually anything, and will be particularly effective for use on the internet and e-mails. You can turn this feature off if required.

Speak Characters, Words and Sentences

When typing text, you can set Speak & See to:

Speak back each character (letter or key) after it is typed. Speak back each word after it is typed. Speak back each sentence after it is typed.

This is very useful for checking spelling and grammar during text creation and for reviewing the sentences as they are created. Each one of these features can be turned off from this menu.

Arrow Keys

When you move around the text in many text areas, including Microsoft Word, using the up/down/left/right arrows on your keyboard (instead of your mouse) you can choose whether Speak & See speaks by ticking "Arrow Keys".

When moving the up or down arrows, Speak & See will speak the full line of text. In this way, you can have a document spoken to you line by line, by using the down arrow key.

Pressing the Ctrl and left or right arrow will speak the next word from where the cursor is.

Pressing the left/right arrow will speak the next character in the word.

Pressing the Shift and down arrow to select a number of lines of text, will allow that block of lines to be spoken.

Spoken Text Highlight SettingsWhen Speak & See is speaking text from Microsoft Word documents, you can also highlight the text that is being spoken. The voice is synchronised with the highlighted word or sentence, giving greater assistance in following the text.

You can choose to highlight each word as it is spoken, or each sentence, or each paragraph. You can also change the colour of the highlighted text and the background using the Highlight Settings part of the Advanced Speech Settings Menu.

TranslatingSpeak & See helps you to learn English by providing you with an easy way to get translations for any text at the press of key.

Translation and Look UpYou can get translations for words as you go along. This helps you to learn by letting you pick out particular words you need help with.

To get a translation, hold down the Control key and hover with the mouse over the word. You will see a pop-up window that contains the word, a picture of it, and a translation into your language.

You will also see a Search link. This is in case the word does not have any translation: just click on the link to open up a web browser so you can check it online.

The translation pop-up will also appear when you select some text so you can look it up on the Internet by clicking the Search link.

You can change the translation language and other settings in Look Up Settings.

Look Up settingsThe Look Up settings tab lets you control how translation works.

Tooltips

This section controls the pop-up Tooltip window for your translation.

No tooltips: Select this to turn off the translation pop-up window entirely.

Show tooltips on CTRL and Hover: Select this to turn on the translation pop-up window. This is the default.

Show graphic: If checked, a picture of the word being translated is shown in the translation pop-up window.

ToolTip always visible: If checked, the ToolTip is always shown, even if you move the mouse. This lets you put the ToolTip somewhere out of the way where you know where it is and can refer to it when you want.

Look Up on select: If checked, the ToolTip updates when you select (highlight) text with the mouse as well as when you hold down the control key and point. Uncheck this to stop the ToolTip showing selected text.

Dictionary

Just select the translation dictionary you want Speak & See to use from this list. This will change the translation shown in the ToolTip window.

Writing and CheckingAs well as reading and translating, Speak & See has some features to help you when you are writing in English.

Check Features

Speak & See provides a single Check Button for use in Microsoft Word which will check your words or documents for spelling, offer meanings, dictionary definitions, alternatives and identify homophones with their meanings.

The Check feature makes the checking of your text and documents easier and more comprehensive, by combining a homophone checker, thesaurus and spellchecker.

To use the Check feature, place the cursor in front of or within the word you would like to

check. Press the Check Button or .

If there is a typing error (which may be identified by a red underline by Word) the following Spelling Check Box will appear;

Suggested alternative spellings are given, and the meaning of the suggested words are shown in the lower box. If there is a picture icon associated with the suggestions, that will be shown also. If you hover your mouse over the words within the Check Box, they will be spoken.

You can spell check the whole document by clicking the "Spell Check Document" button.

If the word is a homophone (homophones are words that are pronounced alike even if they differ in spelling or meaning, such as "pair" and "pear") the Homophone Check Box will appear. This box will show a list of alternative words that sound the same, along with the meaning of each word in the lower box. For many homophones there are picture icons to help differentiate between the same sounding words. Click on each word to see its meaning (or hover mouse to listen to meaning).

If the word being checked has alternative words with the same or similar meaning, the Meaning Check Box will appear, (if the word is a homophone, a Meaning tab behind the Homophone Check Box will appear). If there are no meanings in the Thesaurus linked to the word, then you will receive a "No Suggestions" message.

Clicking the + button, if available, shows the full definitions from the built in reference dictionary.

Homophone Features

Pressing the Homophone Button when you are working in Microsoft Word produces a pull down menu selection.

Click the mouse pointer at the beginning of a paragraph that you would like to check for

homophones. Pressing Show Homophones or will show you all the homophones in that paragraph or in the selected text. Homophones are words that are pronounced alike even if they differ in spelling or meaning, such as "pair" and "pear". Speak & See highlights this by indicating the homophones as blue, but you can change this colour in the Homophone Settings.

You can clear all the homophones shown in blue using the menu setting Clear

Homophones or . Firstly, click the mouse pointer at the beginning of the paragraph, and then select Clear Homophones from the Speak & See Toolbar.

Check Words & Keyboard SettingsIt is possible to modify the settings for Word Checks in the Check Words & KeyBoard Settings Menu.

You can choose to turn the Spell Check off, Meanings Check off or Homophone Check off.

You can also show the syllabification of words (split down into syllables) at the bottom of the Meanings Check Box.

You can also show the Parts of Speech (verb, noun, adjective etc.) in the Meanings Check Box also.

Homophone Settings

Clicking the Homophone Settings Button, which brings up the following settings menu;

You can change the colour in which the homophones are shown.

You can choose to show homophones as they are typed into a Microsoft Word document. A small beep will also happen when a homophone is typed, if this selection is made.

Should you wish to ignore certain homophones from the Speak & See homophone dictionary, you can do this by clicking the Add (+) button which brings up the following box;

Type in the homophone you wish to ignore and it will appear on the list. If you later wish to remove it from the "ignore list", click on the word and press the Remove button.

Customising Speak & SeeYou can change how Speak & See operates to suit you.

Moving and Docking the Speak & See Toolbar

Lock Toolbar to Active Window

The Speak & See Toolbar locks onto the current active Window, and will move around as you change the applications that you are working in by default.

Floating Toolbar

You may want the toolbar to "float" so that you can move it around the PC screen as you need. This can be changed in the View Settings menu. Simply uncheck the "Lock Toolbar to active window" check box.

Dock Toolbar to the top of the screen

You can dock the floating toolbar at the top of the screen. To do this, first you need to set the Speak & See Toolbar to float, by unselecting the following box in the View Settings menu.

Once in floating mode, click on the title bar above Speak & See and drag it to the top of the screen.

Drag it down to make it float again.

Minimise Toolbar

You can remove the Speak & See Toolbar completely by "minimising" the Toolbar, but still have many of the speech and prediction features working for you (if enabled).

To minimise, first you need to set the Speak & See Toolbar to float, by unselecting the following box in the View Settings menu.

When the Toolbar is in "floating" mode, a minimise window button will appear (circled below). Click this and the Speak & See Toolbar will disappear. However, advanced speech features such as Speak When Mouse Selects, will still work.

Speak & See will still be running, and confirmation of this is the small Speak & See icon sitting in the System Tray near to your clock, usually on the bottom right hand of your PC screen.

If you click the left mouse button on the Speak & See icon, the Toolbar will reappear. Another way to minimise the Toolbar is the click the right mouse button on the Speak & See system tray icon.

If you start Speak & See but cannot see the Toolbar, check to see if the icon is in the System Tray. If it is, then left click it with the mouse and the Speak & See Toolbar will become active.

View Settings

Speak & See View Settings allows you to change the Buttons appearing on the Speak & See Toolbar, and also change the size of the Buttons. To include a Button, click the chosen Button on the View Settings Menu to make it "pushed down". To remove a Button, click the chosen button so that it appears "raised".

You can change the size of the Speak & See Toolbar to be small, medium or large. You can decide whether to show the text caption that describes what the button does - removing this reduces the Toolbar size further.

You can also choose to have the Toolbar "floating" so you can click the top of the Toolbar and drag it anywhere around the screen as you desire. If the Toolbar isn't floating, it will lock onto the top right of the active window in which you are working. To remove the Speak & See Toolbar but leave Speak & See running, see Moving the Speak & See Menu section.

You can also change the Speak & See 'skin'. You can choose which skin you would like by selecting the relevant option. You can choose from Classic, Grey or Silver:

Classic

Grey

Silver

Save Text to Audio FilesSpeak & See lets you save the text in Microsoft Word documents and text from any application selected and copied to the Windows clipboard to audio (sound) files. The Save to Audio file formats are WMA, WAV and Ogg.

The Save to Audio can be a slow process on very long documents. There is a progress bar showing how much of the conversion is completed. The voice used for the audio conversion is the Realspeak Voice selected at the time in the Speech Settings window.

To convert text to audio files:

For Word documents: Open the Word document you want to convert to an audio file.

For web pages and other texts: Go to the web page you want to convert to an audio file. Select the text you want to have saved with the mouse. Press Copy, which is normally in the Edit menu, or Press the Control (Ctrl) Key and the letter C at the same time. The text will be copied to the Windows clipboard. You cannot see this.

THEN

On the Speak & See toolbar, click on the Save button and choose Save to Audio.

OR

Open the Speak & See Settings Window, and click on the Speech Tab;

Click the Save as Audio File Button

THEN

The following Save File dialog box will appear. Please give the file a name, and choose the location on your PC where you would like to save the file.

You can then open this file with your PC Media Player or transfer it to a portable audio player, using your player's software or suitable other software.

Keyboard ShortcutsThere are a number of keyboard shortcuts that can be used instead of having to rely on the mouse. These shortcuts can also be used by speech recognition software, such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional version, to give fuller voice control over Speak & See. The shortcuts are:

F7 KEY = Play Button

F8 KEY = Stop Button

F9 KEY = Check Button

F10 KEY = Show Homophones

F11 KEY = Clear Homophones

F12 KEY = Help Button

CTRL = MUTE SPEECH

Shift + F5 KEY = Swaps keyboard shortcuts to Speak & See

F6 KEY = Swaps keyboard shortcuts to Microsoft Word

Shift + F7 KEY = Play Next Sentence

Shift + F8 KEY = Open Settings

Technical SupportIf you have any queries please visit our comprehensive online help pages at www.nuance.co.uk/support/