Text to Speech accessibility improvements (primarily a shortcut alternative to INSERT please)

[oneswitch]

BeebEm is brilliant. Thanks for all you do to keep it running.

One request I have is that on my PC Specialist laptop, it's impossible to enter INSERT + a number pad key (e.g. number pad 1 to toggle auto-read of text as it is written to the BBC micro screen). Insert is a subkey that needs another modfier held to access it.

I can make a bodge a solution with JoyToKey and a gamepad, but it's not ideal. Perhaps Right-CTRL could be used as a supplement to INSERT?

I was also wondering if there could be some instructions / method of adjusting the speech synthesis to adjust the speed and voice, and also perhaps a keyboard short-cut to clear the buffer if possible?

Fingers crossed.

Barrie
OneSwitch.org.uk

[chrisn]

Thanks! I'll look into this ... the first things I've noticed are the default speed seems much too fast, and my laptop doesn't have a numeric keypad so I can't control it.

[oneswitch]

That's interesting, as I thought it was perhaps a little slow. I was told

ALT+ Number Pad 3 and ALT + Number pad 9 are supposed to adjust the speed, but I can't get that to work either with my keyboard.

Good luck, and thanks for taking a look at it.

[chrisn]

I've made a few changes:

• Added new menu options to allow you to set the voice
• The selected voice and speech rate are saved to Preferences.cfg (needs to be done manually via the Options menu)
• The default rate is now 0
• Either Right-Ctrl or Insert can be used to control the speech output
• Alt + Num Pad 4 clears the speech buffer

If you'd like me to send you a new version to test, please send a DM via StarDot.

[oneswitch]

Nice one, Chris. Thanks so much. I'll drop you a line.