Growing up with the keyboard and mouse makes it difficult to accept the Text-To-Speech (TTS) medium. With the QWERTY-style keyboard layout firmly implanted in my brain, I can hammer out correspondence and articles quickly and efficiently.
Growing up with the keyboard and mouse makes it difficult to accept the Text-To-Speech (TTS) medium. With the QWERTY-style keyboard layout firmly implanted in my brain, I can hammer out correspondence and articles quickly and efficiently. So, when asked to come up with ideas for implementing TTS in real world situations, I used my familiar Office applications as a test lab.
Using TTS to audit your input
Since individuals and corporations use Microsoft Excel extensively, I thought this application would be a good place to start my testing. The most obvious advantage of using TTS with Excel is the ability to quickly check large lists of numbers. My brain seems to disconnect from my fingers when typing in long lists of numbers. I can recall several times in the past where I copied a bunch of numbers into Excel from a printed output, only to find my totals completely different from the original. Searching through the forest of numbers for my mistakes proved equally time consuming.
With TTS, you can audit your input by having the computer replay your words either as you type or after you have completed your list. While having TTS repeat a cell value as you type is a neat feature, I found the system had trouble keeping up with the speed at which I could input numbers. Therefore, I primarily used TTS to repeat cell values after I finished typing. For example, suppose I enter a list of numbers into a spreadsheet like the one in Figure A.
Chances are, I transposed or missed a number somewhere along the way. To check for accuracy using TTS, I must select the data I want repeated back to me. Next, I simply click on the first icon on the TTS toolbar (Figure B).
|To stop TTS from repeating cell values, click the second icon from the left. To have it repeat the cell value as you type, click the fifth icon from the left.|
The PC will begin to repeat back each number (or word) it encounters before moving on to the next cell. If you prefer to have the PC read row-by-row, click on the third icon in the TTS toolbar and it will repeat cell values left to right. The fourth icon controls the column-by-column playback mode. If you’re having trouble with you