WordTalk Simple Guide

 Compatibility

WordTalk works with Microsoft Word 97, 2000 and 2003 running on Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP. Depending on how your computer is set up there may be minor differences in some aspects of operation but the basic speech should work with most combinations of Word and Windows.

 Installing WordTalk on a Standalone Computer

Insert the CD in the drive and wait for the installer to start. If it doesn’t, open the CD and double click on the WordTalk Installer icon. This will install WordTalk and the Microsoft SAPI 5 Speech, with the voices Sam, Mike and Mary on to your computer. If you are using Windows XP and you already have SAPI 5 speech with the Sam voice, SAPI 5 will be updated and the Mike and Mary voices added. When the WordTalk Microsoft Word Template file is installed, you can either choose to have it placed in the default Program Files folder on your computer, or you can browse and install it somewhere else.

If you see this Security warning, just click Run.

Installing WordTalk on a Networked Computer

WordTalk is a Microsoft Word Template, which uses Microsoft SAPI 5 speech and voices. To use WordTalk on a networked computer, you must have SAPI 5 speech and voices installed on the computer, and you can either install the WordTalk Template on the computer, or on a shared network folder.

Insert the CD in the drive and wait for the installer to start. If it doesn’t, open the CD and double click on the WordTalk Installer icon. This will install WordTalk and the Microsoft SAPI 5 Speech, with the voices Sam, Mike and Mary on to your computer. If you are using Windows XP and you already have SAPI 5 speech with the Sam voice, SAPI 5 will be updated and the Mike and Mary voices added. When the WordTalk Microsoft Word Template file is installed, you can either choose to have it placed in the default Program Files folder on your computer, or you can browse and install it somewhere else, such as in a shared network folder so that all computers on the network can access it. For example, if you install it in a shared Word Startup folder, then WordTalk will be loaded every time Word starts up when a user who uses that particular startup folder logs on.

Opening the WordTalk Toolbar

The first time you use WordTalk with Microsoft Word on your computer, you will have to “tell” Word where to find WordTalk on your computer’s Hard Drive or network. By default, the WordTalk template file is installed in­side the WordTalk folder in the Program Files in your C: hard drive.

Start Word, then from the Tools menu in Word, click on Templates and Add-Ins.

On the right of the Global Templates and Add-Ins box, click Add.

Navigate to WordTalk by opening:-

®    C:

®    Program Files

®    WordTalk

Open the WordTalk folder, then select:

 WordTalk.dot         

WordTalk will then appear in the Global and Add-Ins box with a tick box beside it.
Make sure that the box is ticked and click OK.

Word may then give you another Security Warning – if it does, click Enable Macros.

 The WordTalk toolbar should appear beside the rest of the Word Toolbars at the top of the screen.  (If it doesn’t, from the View menu, go into Toolbars and tick WordTalk)

Type some text, put the cursor somewhere in the text, and click W, S or P on the WordTalk toolbar to read the word, sentence or paragraph. There will be a short delay the first time it speaks while the voice is loaded and configured. If WordTalk does not speak, and you see the message box on the right, it is because your Word Security settings are set ‘High’, to prevent any malicious macros or viruses running. Since WordTalk is a macro, this also stops WordTalk operating.

Go to Tools > Macro > Security in Word, and set the Security to be Medium. Then go to Tools > Templates and Add-Ins, and untick WordTalk. Close Word, start it up again, go to Tools > Templates and Add-Ins and select WordTalk once again. Click Enable when you get asked if you want to enable WordTalk. Then put the security back to its previous High or Very High setting.

You should only need to do this once – Word will remember that WordTalk is allowed the next time you use it.

 From then on if you wish to access the WordTalk toolbar, it will be in the Global Templates and Add-Ins box. Tick the tick box and the toolbar should appear.

If you wish to have the WordTalk toolbar automatically loaded when you start up MS Word, open the folder on the CD called WTconfigure and click on Setup. This installs a small program called WordTalkStartup which lets you choose whether to have WordTalk load when MS Word starts up, or not.

 The WordTalk Toolbar

To read through the text one word, sentence or paragraph at a time, just keep clicking on the relevant button.

 You can also use Keyboard Shortcuts to control WordTalk – see below.

Configuring WordTalk

You can adjust the WordTalk settings by clicking on the Configure button. It has three tabs – Speech, Colour and Keys. The settings you select will be saved by WordTalk for use the next time, apart from the voice itself, which you must configure using the Speech Control Panel (see below).

Speech

The Speed of the voice can be increased by dragging right along the speed bar and decreased by dragging left.

The Volume of the voice can be increased by dragging right along the volume bar and decreased by dragging left.

Clicking on the small down arrow on the right of the box below shows the voices available (usually Sam, Mike and Mary). Click on the voice name to choose the voice you want.

Click OK to use your settings.

Colour

The colour tab lets you choose a background colour for the highlighted text, which many people find helpful. The highlighted text is the opposite of the background colour, i.e. clicking on dark blue gives blue background and yellow foreground; red gives red background and turquoise foreground. Blue, yellow, dark red or light gray are usually the best options.

Keys

You can use keyboard shortcuts to control WordTalk instead of clicking on the toolbar. If you want to use shortcuts, tick the Keyboard shortcuts box, then OK.

Talking Spell Check

Word has a fairly good spell checker, and the WordTalk spellchecker uses the Word dictionaries with a few “phonic” enhancements. WordTalk also speaks the suggestions which can be helpful in some cases. To use the Word Talk spell check, click on the word to be checked and then click on the WordTalk spelling icon. (The talking spell-check will only check words that Microsoft Word considers to be misspelled.)

Listening to the suggestions

To listen to the suggestions, click on the word.

If a correct suggestion is found, select it and click Replace to correct the word.

Listening to synonyms

Sometimes it is useful to get a list of the synonyms of a suggestion, for example, to clarify the meaning. To do this, select the suggestion and then click on Thesaurus. If there are any synonyms in the thesaurus dictionary they will be displayed in the synonym box. They can be listened to by clicking on them. 

Using WordTalkStartup

If you wish WordTalk to be available automatically every time you start MS Word – so you don’t have to open the WordTalk toolbar manually - open the folder on the CD called WTconfigure and click on Setup. This installs a small program called WordTalkStartup into c:/Program Files/WordTalkStartUp. Run the program by clicking on Start > Programs > WordTalkStartup and you will see this window:

Choose the first tick box to make sure WordTalk is always loaded when you start MS Word. WordTalk will be copied into the Microsoft Word startup folder.  If you have loaded WordTalk into MS Word Startup previously but do not want this to happen anymore then choose the second tick box.

If you didn’t install WordTalk into its default location in C:/Program Files/WordTalk then this program will crash because it can’t find WordTalk. It is usually quite safe to continue working on your machine but the automatic startup will not work.

Setting a Default WordTalk voice

When you start WordTalk it will use the computer’s default voice, which is usually ‘Microsoft Mary’. You can change the voice with the WordTalk Configure panel, but you may want to set it up so that WordTalk always uses a particular voice, by default. To do this, open up the Speech Control Panel  (Start > Control Panels in Windows XP; Start > Settings > Control Panels in Windows 98; if you can’t see the Control Panels on your machine, speak to your ICT coordinator or System Administrator).

Now click the Text To Speech tab, and choose the voice you want to use.

Click Apply, and then OK. Now, when you start up WordTalk, you should find it speaks using your default voice:

Extra voices for WordTalk

WordTalk can use any SAPI 5 voice and Microsoft Mary, Mike and Sam are installed when you install WordTalk from the CD. WordTalk should also be able to use other SAPI 5 voices which may have been installed by other programs.

If you have Don Johnston’s Solo package (or any of its components such as Co:Writer SE or Write:Outloud SE) you will have ‘Graham’ and ‘Lucy’ voices from Elan on your computer. However, these are not fully SAPI 5 compatible and we have found that the voices do not always work reliably with WordTalk.  If you have Clicker 5 installed, you will also have Graham and Lucy but these appear to be slightly different versions and WordTalk cannot use them at all!

You may have lots of other voices on your computer (installed by programs like Clicker 4, or Co:Writer 4000, for example) but if they are the older SAPI 4 voices they will not be available WordTalk.

You can download free, slightly higher quality U.S. English, French and German SAPI 5 voices and you can also buy better voices from several suppliers:

For more help and resources contact:

CALL Centre

The University of Edinburgh

Paterson’s Land, Holyrood Road

Edinburgh EH8 8AQ

Tel: 0131 651 6236 / 6235

Fax: 0131 651 6234

http://www.wordtalk.org.uk