Accessibility Extensions for Chrome Browser - Text-to-Speech and More

ChromeVox is just one of the Google Accessibility extensions. Be sure to check out ChromeVis, ChromeShades, and ChromeLite as well. The text-to-speech (TTS) programs convert text or web documents to human speech. Does it sound like a human voice? Not really, it is a computer-generated voice but it is as close to human as it gets. You can adjust the speed, repeat, or change the pitch of the voice.

ChromeVox

The ChromeVox screen reader is an extension to Chrome that brings the speed, versatility, and security of Chrome to visually impaired users.


Using Google Document List with ChromeVox that provides accessibility features for vision impaired users of Google Docs.

Other text-to-speech extensions include:

Chrome Speak - select to speak with offline TTS engine.

SpeakIt! Select text you want to read and listen to it. SpeakIt converts text into speech so you no longer need to read.


SpeakIt reads selected text using Google TTS (Text-to-Speech) with language auto-detection.

Balabolka

If you are not a Chrome user, Balabolka is a free and portable Text-To-Speech (TTS) program that is browser-independent. No installation is required.

You don't have to be visually impaired to benefit from TTS programs. For example, I use Balabolka several times a week to convert long articles from medical journals or newspapers to standard MP3 files. The files are then uploaded to Google Docs and I download them when I have some time to listen to the articles.

ChromeVis

Magnify and change the color of any selected text. Use the mouse or the keyboard to move the selection around the page.


How ChromeVis works.

ChromeShades

ChromeShades is an easy tool to help you make your site more accessible to blind users.

References:

Hear Web Text with Google Chrome Speak
New Text-to-Speech API for Chrome extensions

Google Chrome Gets More Than 1,500 Extensions and Bookmark Sync

Google Chrome (version 4) now includes two of the browser's most frequently requested features: extensions and bookmark sync.

Extensions

Extensions let you add new features and functions to your browser. Some provide one-click access to some of your favorite web applications like Twitter, or news and information sources such as NPR. Others are useful tweaks for performing common online tasks such as browsing photos, getting directions or shopping.

Now you can browse over 1,500 items in the extensions gallery and install them on the stable version of Google Chrome.


Using Extensions on Google Chrome

Some of the extensions I installed:

Forecastfox Weather
Feedly
Google Share Button
Google Voice (by Google)
NPR: News, Music and Books
RSS Subscription Extension (by Google)
Page Rank

AdBlock by gundlach

Bookmark sync

Bookmark sync is a handy feature for those of you who use several computers — say, a laptop at work and a desktop at home. You can enable bookmark sync to synchronize your bookmarks on all of your computers so that when you create a bookmark on one computer, it's automatically added across all your computers. This means that you won't need to manually recreate the bookmark each time you switch computers.


Bookmark sync for Google Chrome

References:
Over 1,500 new features for Google Chrome
Extensions, bookmark sync and more for Google Chrome

Updated: 03/02/2010