ClaroRead assistive technology

ClaroRead is a text-to-speech app. In other words it reads electronic text out loud in a lifelike voice. In this video you'll learn how to customize ClaroRead''s voice and playback settings for your needs. You will learn how to use ClaroRead to read a word document, a PDF document and a web page. You'll also learn how to convert inaccessible documents into a format that is readable by ClaroRead. You'll learn how to use ClaroRead's screen ruler and finally, you'll learn how to convert electronic text into an mp3 file.

Let's start ClaroRead. We'll go to the Start menu. Select "ClaroRead Plus". ClaroRead starts up. You'll see that it's toolbar appears. We will click in the document that we're using and the toolbar will then go to the top of the screen.

Here's an example of how ClaroRead reads electronic text. I'm going to use this extract from "War of the Worlds". I place my cursor where I want it to read. I click "play".

ClaroRead: "No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century"

I click "stop" for it to stop. Now you can change the gender of the voice, the speed of the voice -- you can also change the higlighting. Let's have a look in "settings".

At the moment the voice is set to "Australian Karen". Let's test it.

ClaroRead: "This is a test of the current voice"

Instructor: You can see that I can change it to "Australian Lee"

ClaroRead: "This is a test of the current voice"

Instructor: There are also other options available, I'm going to use "Australian Karen"

If I want to change the speed of the voice I can make it faster.

ClaroRead: "This is a test of the current voice"

Instructor: I can make it slower.

ClaroRead: "This is a test of the current voice"

Instructor: There are options to pause between words,stop after a sentence that's read, as well as to speak a word that's being hovered over.

Let's go into "advanced speech".

When the software is reading the electronic text I can have it to highlight one word at a time. I can have it highlight a trail of words, or I can have it highlighted sentence. High lighting no words or highlighting a whole paragraph are also options. Let's click "sentence" and see what it looks like.

ClaroRead:"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century"

Instructor: Ok, let's go back to "settings", let's click on "word" and see what it looks like.

ClarodRead:"No one would have believed, in the last years of the"

Instructor: Also, if you want to change the background color you can do that as well.

Let's click on "foreground" first of all, and this time we'll select "yellow". For "background", let's have a look and we can select any of these colors here. Let's select "blue" Let's see what that looks like.

ClaroRead:"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth"

Instructor: Explore these options to get the voice that you like, the speed that you like and so that playback highlights the words just as you want it to.ClaroRead reads Word documents, PDFs and web pages. I have a Word document opened in front of me.

I have the cursor placed at the beginning of it, I click "play",

ClaroRead:"No one would have believed in the last year"

Instructor: I click "stop" and it stops reading. Let's have a look at a PDF document.

Again I place the cursor at the beginning of the text I want to have read, I click "play".

ClaroRead: "The planet Mars. I"

Instructor: I press "stop" and it stops reading.

Let's go to Internet Explorer. I'm going to place my cursor at the beginning of text that I want to have read.

You'll notice that it reads the title of the document first before reading the text that I have the cursor in front of.

ClaroRead:"The War of The Worlds. Book One. The secular cooling that must some day overtake our planet"

Instructor: "Also, if you select the text

ClaroRead:"And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought"

Instructor: ClaroRead will also read it back to you.

Let's go and have a look at Google Chrome. In this case, if I place the cursor at the beginning of the text that I want to have read

ClaroRead is not reading it. What I have to do is I have to select the text.

ClaroRead:"The secular cooling that must some day overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbor"

Instructor: I click "stop" to stop it reading.So ClaroRead reads a number of different file formats relatively easily. You just need to remember that for some documents you need to select the text to have it read to you.

Some documents such as image PDFs cannot be read immediately by ClaroRead  or any other screen reading software.What you do need to do, you need to convert the document into an accessible format. I'm going to show you how to do that.

So in front of me, I have an inaccessible PDF or an image PDF -- is sometimes what it's called.

I can tell that it's inaccessible by clicking on it and you'll see that the whole document changes color. If I try to place my cursor in the text it doesn't allow me to do it.

ClaroRead has a scan function that allows you to scan it into an accessible format.Let's go to the toolbar. There are a number of options here: "scan from paper", "scan from PDF" and "scan from screen" What we're going to do is we go to "scan from the PDF file"

First of all, make sure you close the document that you're going to scan. Go to "scan". "Scan from PDF/file". Search for the document, in this case, I've called it "image PDF"

ClaroRead  has now brought up its preview screen. In this screen

there are a number of options to edit the text that you've scanned.  In this case because the text was fairly straightforward; it was just in one single column -- it was fairly easy --and there's no editing required.

I'm going to go to "save as" I'm going to select "word document" and now I'll click "Save". So I've opened up the document that's been converted -- it's in a Microsoft Word format.

You can see I can place my cursor in it and if I press "Play"

ClaroRead: "No one would have believed in the last years of" the software plays are back. It is an accessible document now.

The "extras menu" provides more functions with ClaroRead , let's select "Screen Ruler".

You can see that under "mode" I have ruler selected and the color as yellow when I move my cursor down the page you can see that a yellow ruler follows it. It assists me in focusing on each line of text as I am reading it.I can change the size of the ruler. I can change its opacity. And I can also change its color.

If we select "underline", you will see that a line now follows the cursor down the screen.Again, this can assist me in focusing on each line of text that I am reading.I can change the size of the line, the color of the line, its opacity. I can also put shade above the line or below it. Let's select "shade below the line"

You can see that this now really provides emphasis to the area of text that I'm reading or that I have read.

If we select "overlay" you can see that a color has now overlaid across the entire screen. You can change the color. You can change its opacity.

If you want to minimize the screen ruler  menu just click on the minimize button -- it will now appear in the hidden icons.

ClaroRead  will convert electronic text into an mp3 file. I'm going to give an example using this document. Converting electronic text to mp3 files tends to work best when the document is a Word document and when it's in one single column just like this one is. So what I'll do is I'll select all, because I want all the text to be converted into an mp3 file,

I'll go to the toolbar, the settings menu. I'll click "save as audio file" I've selected where I want it saved to. I'll click "save".

ClaroRead  is now converting the word document to an mp3 file.

So here's the file we just converted. I'll click on "play".

ClaroRead:"No one would have believed in the last years of the ninteenth century that"

Instructor: You might like to give it a go. Listening to readings on an mp3 file could work for you.

So that's an introduction to Claro read! Don't forget to use the help menu to find out more about text to speech with ClaroRead. All the best using text-to-speech software!