CHROMEBOOK ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES
ATAC 2019
TEXT-TO-SPEECH
On a Chromebook (not a desktop or laptop computer accessing Chrome and Google) you can provide ability for anyone
to hear accessible (Docs, Slides, most websites) text read aloud.
1. Open Chrome browser
2. Top right-hand corner is three dots in a vertical presentation, click on the dots
3. Settings: when settings box opens, click on three horizontal lines on left corner
4. Advanced
5. Accessibility
6. Manage accessibility features
7. Text-to-Speech
8. Enable select-to-speak click on toggle switch to turn on
9. Below Enable select-to-speak is Text-to-speech voice settings where you can choose a voice and customize rate
and pitch of speech. Typically, the default setting is a little fast and you may want to slow it down for your
student.
A speaker icon should now appear in the bottom right hand corner. To use text-to-speech:
1. Open Doc or website that needs to be read aloud
2. Make a box around the text you want read aloud. To do this:
a. Click on the speaker icon
b. Move cursor to the beginning of the text to be read. While pressing the left side of the touchpad,
use your other hand to draw a box around the text. This is the same action you would use to
highlight text, but by clicking on the speaker first, you highlight the text specifically to be read. It
can be a sentence, paragraph, or a page. Whatever is in the box will be read line by line. You can
repeat as often as needed.
Text-to-speech can be used as part of the editing/revising process when writing. This is especially valuable if the student
has difficulty decoding but has adequate listening comprehension.
SPEECH-TO-TEXT
Voice Typing, which is the speech-to-text feature in Google Docs and in the notes section of Google Slides. However,
there are other places where a student may want to use speech-to-text.
Voice Typing
1. Open a Doc or Slide
2. Tools tab
3. In Docs: Voice Typing in Slides: Voice Type speaker notes (only works in the speaker note section; to add text to
the actual slide, you can dictate into the speaker notes and cut and paste or you can use the speech-to-text as
noted below
4. Click on the microphone and it turns red. It will transcribe everything it hears. Click to turn it off. When using
for the first time, you will receive a message asking for permission to access microphone. Click on allow.
Speech-to-Text
1. Follow steps 1 – 6 in text-to-speech to get to manage accessibility features
2. Keyboard and text input
3. Enable dictation (speak to type) click on toggle switch to turn on
A microphone icon should appear at the bottom left corner of the screen. To use speech-to-text in other places besides
Docs and Speaker notes in Slides:
1. You need to have some form of a text box in which to dictate: the URL search box in Google, a text box in a
PDF, the content section of a Slide, etc. There has to be a place to enter text.
2. Click on the microphone icon wherever you need to insert text.
3. Click it off when done otherwise it will continue to record
4. If you are using some form of a PDF editor such as Kami or DocHub, you can open scanned documents with
one of these apps and use speech-to-text to annotate
Tips for using speech to text:
1. Dictate one thought/sentence at a time.
2. Turn microphone off between sentences.
3. Turn microphone off if you get stuck or forget what you want to say.
4. End punctuation must be used, either through dictation or keyboard. If there are no periods, then the
device has trouble understanding a long rambling sentence.
a. Speech-to-text uses context of previous words and beginnings of sentences to base transcription
accuracy. If there are too many things going on in one sentence, it can become easily confused and
change text that was previously transcribed correctly.
5. Speak clearly but do not yell. You cannot whisper but you can speak quietly.
6. Some students cannot watch as they dictate because it is too distracting or confusing to watch the
transcription appear and change as they are speaking. Just lower the screen a little or turn the device
around.
7. Dictate punctuation to keep momentum going. This also works with helping students to remember to use
periods. You can Google a list of voice commands that can be used with Voice Typing.
8. Pre-writing tasks that are performed before writing or keyboarding really need to be used before dictating.
It is difficult for most students to hold the thoughts in their heads in the correct order and to dictate in an
organized and efficient manner.
9. Speech-to-text is a great way for a student to brain storm ideas quickly into a Doc and later rearrange into
sentences and paragraphs.
10. The student needs to edit for errors of transcription as well as typical errors. Errors can be corrected with
speech-to-text or keyboarding. Text-to-speech is a good complement to composing with speech-to-text.
11. Typically students who struggle with expressive language challenges will struggle with speech-to-text for the
same reasons they struggle with paper and pencil. Expression is still difficult, speech-to-text removes the
stress of paper and pencil or keyboarding but coming up with ideas and language will still be present.
If having trouble finding these features in accessibility, make sure the Chromebook is running the latest version of
Chrome. Some districts lock down the updating feature and we could not enable these features until the Chromebooks
were updated.
Questions? Contact Kelly Cox at the Ventura County SELPA Assistive Technology Assessment Center (ATAC)
kcox@vcoe.org
805-437-1575
