Make Your Mac Talk Back!

Hey, did you know that you can make your Mac computer talk for you? You can. It will read any digital text that you can highlight, including Word documents, PDFs, and internet text.  Pretty cool feature. We often have student's use it to support their reading. Some students use it to read whole passages, others use it to sound out specific words.  It's a digital voice, so it's not perfect, but they've gotten better with each passing year.



So, to do this trick, first click on the Apple in the top right corner of your screen. Then click on "System Preferences".












Next, on the fourth row down, click on the "Speech" icon.




Click on the "Text to Speech" tab, and then select the "Speak selected text when the key is pressed" box.

Clicking on "Change Key" allows you to choose the Initiator Key the student will use to begin reading. I use the tilda ( ` ) as it's a key that I almost never use.

Now, if you highlight a word, sentence, or paragraph, and then press the key you press your Initiator Key, the computer will read your text.   Pretty slick, huh?

Enjoy, and happy therapy!