Yesterday, I showed you how to turn on the screen reader for your Android smartphone (click here to read that article .) This handy feature can be a big help for the visually impaired.
Today, we’ll look at how to customize the settings. Open Screen reader and tap on Settings.
Your first option in Settings is Text-to-speech.
Adjust the speed and pitch of the voice your phone uses by moving the slider bar.
Tap on Verbosity to make adjustments in the way the phone reads to you.
Among the options:
- Have the pitch of the voice change while you’re typing things into the keyboard
- Use the phonetic alphabet when reading letters aloud.
- Speak punctuation aloud
- Usage hints
- Counting items on lists
- Reading notifications aloud when the screen is off
- Reading element types aloud
You can also choose to have the phone stop reading aloud when it gets close to your ear.
There’s also an option to give your phone a good shake to have it continue reading without the need for you to scroll.
You can also decide if you want your phone to speak password characters aloud as you enter them and if you want caller ID to read the numbers of your incoming calls and messages aloud.
There’s also the option to have vibration or sound feedback.
The last option is to decide if you want to turn on Focus Indicator.
With that setting enabled a box will appear around the portion of the screen Screen reader is focusing on. You can adjust the thickness of the lines around the focus area and the color.
