Speak
Build a sentence by touching symbols, and have the voice on your device speak it, without sending anything anywhere.
Everything happens in your browser, on this device: the sentence you build goes nowhere. The voice that speaks it is the one installed on your device, and no text is sent to a synthesis service.
This board belongs to the Mulberry module, kept apart from the rest of the service. Its symbols are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0: any board derived from this one is shared under the same licence. The other boards in Words Within Reach do not use these symbols, and are therefore not covered by this obligation.
Board settings
The sequence contains the cells of the board, then the three commands of the sentence bar, as a last row: “Speak the sentence”, “Delete the last word” and “Clear all”. A sentence can therefore be built, corrected and spoken with the switch alone. The cursor can also announce itself aloud, cell by cell, through the setting above: this is what makes scanning usable without seeing the screen. One gesture still calls for something other than the switch: stopping scanning, with the Escape key or with the “Off” button.
yes
no
help
stop
me
I want
more
finished
it hurts
drink
eat
toilet
you
we
hello
thank you
please
sorry
what
where
go
come
look
talk
listen
sleep
wait
fine
not well
hot
cold
tired
I don’t know
less
home
Using the tool
Touching a cell adds its word to the sentence and speaks it straight away. The “Speak the sentence” button then speaks the whole sentence, in the order the words were added.
The top row is the same on every Words Within Reach board, in the same places: a hand that has learnt where “yes” is finds it everywhere, without looking for it.
Scanning is started with the space bar or the Enter key, and so with any switch that sends either of them. One press starts the sequence, the next press selects: in “cell by cell” it takes the current cell, in “row then cell” it takes the row first, then the cell within that row. A row taken by mistake exits on its own: after one full pass with no press, the sequence returns to the rows. The Escape key stops scanning: it puts the setting back to “Off”, and the keyboard becomes fully available again.
The sequence contains the cells of the board, then the three commands of the sentence bar, as a last row: “Speak the sentence”, “Delete the last word”, “Clear all”. With a single switch, a sentence can be built, corrected and spoken, without ever using anything but the switch. The cursor can moreover announce itself aloud, cell by cell: this is what makes scanning usable without seeing the screen. One gesture remains that calls for a second key, and it is written here because a person preparing their equipment should know it beforehand: stopping scanning.
The settings above change the number of cells per row and their size, straight away and without reloading the page.
The voice on your device
The voice that speaks the sentence is the one installed on your computer, your tablet or your phone. Voices offered by a remote service are ruled out: no text leaves the device to be spoken.
When no voice is installed, the sentence stays written in large type, legible and ready to show or to print. In French, and in French only, a backup recording exists for a few core words: these recordings have no equivalent in the other languages served, and we do not pretend they do. On some devices no voice is installed for the language of this page: the tool then says so, in the area under the sentence bar.
This tool is a communication aid. Words Within Reach is not a medical device, not medical advice, and not a diagnostic tool. This service measures no one and assesses no one: there is no score, no assessment and no progress tracking, and nothing you compose leaves this device.