Using text-to-speech technology

Talkets from Textic

To make the Kent Police website more accessible, you can now have text read out to you using text-to-speech technology.

This is called Talklets and has been developed by a company called Textic.

The Textic Toolbox, which you can find on each page of the site, includes several useful features to make the site more accessible to visitors.

Functions

Switching on the talking text

To get text read out to you, simply select the 'Play' button and point to some text with your mouse.

Select the 'Stop' button to turn off the voice.

Saving information

To save the main information on a page as an audio file, select the ‘S’ (save) button.

You can also chose to save specific text. Highlight the text with your mouse then save by selecting the ‘S’ button.

Changing the background colour

Select one of the coloured circles to set the background colour to suit your preferences.

This feature is useful for users with low vision, colour blindness or reading difficulties such as dyslexia.

Using the talking hot keys

The Talklets hot keys give you short cuts to Talklets functions using the keyboard rather than a mouse. The range of keys may be familiar to some users of other assistive technologies.

The hot keys are:

F9 - Switch hotkeys and sound on/off

F12 - Hear Hot Key List

S - Smart Story Finder - This feature asks VIKI to automatically find the main story or content on the page. This feature is currently only available for Internet Explorer users.

M - Toggle the mouse over reader. When on, the text of the element the mouse is over will be read.

A - go to next link.

H - go to next heading.

L - go to next list.

I - go to next item in a list.

G - go to Google Accessible Search.

E - Go to the next editable input box. N.B. This will mean your key presses will enter text and NOT activate hotkeys. To activate hot key interaction again press F8.

B - Next button.

F8 - step out of input element, so access keys are re-enabled.

T - Next table.

X - Next DIV.

U - Enter a URL (Web address).

BACKSPACE - go to previous page.

FULL STOP + SHIFT - next element. Most element types will be read aloud.

COMMA + SHIFT - previous element. Most element types will be read aloud.

Z - Zoom in. SHIFT plus Z to zoom out.

V - Read again.

Enabling JavaScript

To use Talklets you need to have JavaScript enabled in your web browser. It is normally enabled by default as JavaScript is used on a large proportion of sites.

To check that JavaScript is enabled on your browser, or to enable it, select ‘Browser settings’ and ‘Enabling JavaScript.’

The following instructions describe how to enable JavaScript in your browser.

Internet Explorer (6.0)

Select Tools from the top menu and then choose Internet Options.

Select Security then Custom Level.

Scroll down until you get to Scripting.

Under Active Scripting, select Enable and OK. 

Internet Explorer (7.0)

Select Tools and Internet Options.

Select Security and Custom Level.

Scroll down to the Scripting section.

Select Enable for Active Scripting and Scripting of Java Applets.

Select OK and then Yes if a box appears to confirm.

Select OK, close the window and reload the page.

Mozilla Firefox (1.0)

Select Tools from the top menu then Options.

Choose Web Features from the left navigation bar.

Select the checkbox next to Enable JavaScript and select OK.

Mozilla Firefox (2.x)

Open Firefox.

On the Tools menu, select Options and then Content in the list.

Under the Content section, select the box next to Enable JavaScript.

Choose the Advanced button to open the Advanced JavaScript Options box.

Select the appropriate boxes under Allow scripts to.

Select OK and then OK again. 

Apple Safari (1.0)

Select Safari from the top menu.

Choose Preferences and then Security.

Select the checkbox next to Enable JavaScript.

Please keep in mind that upgrading your browser or installing new security software or security patches may affect your JavaScript settings.

 

Have you got Javascript enabled on your computer?