I spent a portion of my talk the other night discussing free alternatives to some of the commercial products for individuals with learning differences. Among these options was a set of freely available plugins to Mozilla Firefox (an alternative web browser to Internet Explorer) coupled with free web services such as Google Docs. With these plugins installed, Firefox gains speech output capability and becomes a powerful reading & writing tool.So the big question of the night was how can I do that? Well it takes 2 fairly simple steps which I’ll outline below.
Step 1: Install Mozilla Firefox
- Visit www.mozilla.com and start the process by clicking the download button. Choose the save file option.
- Double click on “FireFox Setup 3.5.xx.exe” file to launch the setup
- Follow the steps shown in the setup wizard
- Look for the Firefox icon to browse the web
Step 2: Install CLiCk, Speak: A Talking Extension for Firefox
Charles Chen has created an excellent plugin which adds simple point and click speech support to Firefox. Installation is quick and easy:
- Visit the down load link on the CLiCk, Speak website.
- Choose Save to Disk when prompted. Its easiest if you save the file to the desktop.
- Start Firefox and drag the file labeled “clickspeak_bundle_v1.5_release.xpi” onto the firefox window. Click on “Install Now” in the box that appears.
- Restart Firefox
When FireFox restarts you will see a new toolbar that looks something like this:
Whoila! That’s all there is too it. I’ll post again on using CLiCk, Speak to “speak” the web.
Here’s a video of the final steps for installation:
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