How to Make Your Mac Talk to You

You may not know that Macs have the built in capability to talk to you. This nifty feature is built in to Mac OS X. You simply highlight the desired text, follow the easy steps below, and away you go. You can also set up a key combination in Speech preferences to hear the text spoken.

This feature is handy not only for the visually impaired, but it can also be used when you’d rather listen to something rather than read it. For instance, you can have your Mac assist with proofreading documents such as Wills or Deeds. I find it helpful sometimes to close my eyes when listening to something to get a different, unimpeded “view” of it.

Here’s how you can make your Mac speak selected text :

1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences and click Speech
2. Click “Text to Speech”
3. Select the “Speak selected text when the key is pressed”checkbox
4. Type one or more modifier keys (Command, Shift, Option, or Control) and another key to set the keys you’ll use to hear selected text
5. Click OK when the key combination you typed appears in the text field

You can learn more about Apple’s Accessibility and Text-to-Speeach features by clicking HERE.