What is Browsealoud?

Browsealoud is an online screen reader to help the visually impaired. This is software which reads the text on the screen and speaks those words to you.

To improve the accessibility of our web site we now include the free to download Browsealoud which gives you the option to have all or parts of the web pages and documents read to you.

How to use Browsealoud

|Browsealoud is a free to use software which can be downloaded from the browsealoud logo, and once downloaded you can use the software to listen to any websites which are Browsealoud enabled, including the BBC.

The software only needs to be downloaded once and can be used on Windows PCs using Internet Explorer or Apple Macs using Safari (|System requirements)

When browsealoud is installed you will see an icon of blue concentric circles at the bottom right hand corner of your screen to tell you that browsealoud is loaded and ready on your computer.

Listen to pages with Browsealoud

Simply by moving your mouse over the text on a website, BrowseAloud will read that word, sentence or paragraph to you, highlighting the text on the screen as it reads (the default is to highlight the text that is being read aloud in yellow, but this can be changed - see settings below). The software is also able to read the on line documents on our web pages which are stored as PDFs.

Settings

Once installed, you can customise the settings to allow you to choose a male or female voice and change the speed, pitch and volume of the reader. If desired, it can also read an entire page from where your cursor points. Simply right click on the browsealoud icon in Task bar at the bottom right of your screen, and select "Open Browsealoud settings", here you can make the necessary changes to the setting to suit how you wish to use the audio reader.

Help

For further help and assistance with the Browsealoud product take a look at the |BrowseAloud FAQs on their website.

Please be aware that this is an electronic reader, and on occasions the reader may mispronounce some unusual words, if these affect the understanding of our pages then you can change the pronunciation using the settings option as above. Click on the show me more options option at the bottom of the settings page, and the select the "Customise Speech" tab and then the "change word pronunciations" button.

If you have any difficulties using this facility or wish to provide feedback please |contact the webmaster

|Further Information on the Website