Text to Speech Option

Hello Kristie! My name is Lisa Krueger and I am a Khan Academy Ambassador teaching in Chicago. What type of devices are your students using to access KA? 

I have the same question. My students are using Chromebooks to access KA.

I am also interested in text to speech, or any method that I could use to allow one of my students who is visually impaired to access the KA practice that I assign to my classes.  For possible devices I have access to chromebook, ipad, macbook, and internet enabled Braillewriter. Any help would be appreciated.

Hello Megan & John! I recently sent the article below to our special ed department. I have not gotten any feedback yet. In the past I've used SpeakIt and Google Play Text to Speech. Hopefully this helps. Thank you for posting. 

https://elearningindustry.com/top-10-text-to-speech-tts-software-elearning 

Is there an option for this?  I teach 6th grade math to 140 students, but some of them have disabilities with reading which makes Khan Academy very difficult.  When I read the questions to them, they can do the math but when I am not available, they can not do the program by themselves.  

Is the text to speech option available for use with chrome books?  I did not see an answer for this from the other posts.

Hello @wrightsl! Currently there is no feature within Khan Academy for screen reading. I suggest reading Use the built-in screen reader for chromebooks to enable the feature. Hopefully this helps. Please let me know if you have any further question, comments, or suggestions. Thank you for posting. 

Is there a way to have text to speech options for ipads? I teach special education, but we only have ipads in my class, not chromebooks. 

Thanks!

Hello Jennifer! Yes, text to speech is an option on iPads. Just follow the steps below. 

Lisa,  

I followed your steps. When I use the feature it closes Khan while it reads the Khan page without the page visible. Do you know how to keep Khan visible while screen reader is reading the words?

Hello @kmnelson01! I apologize for the confusion those steps worked on an older iOS version but not longer work. On the newer versions click General - Accessibility - VoiceOver. Please let me know if you run into any trouble or if you have any further questions, comments, or suggestions. Thank you for posting. 

Hi Lisa,

I did the iOS VoiceOver tutorial and there is no option for the type of pop-ups that khan uses. I can't get it to read the questions.

Has Khan added this screen reading feature? This would be an important addition.

Thanks

Hello, Emily!

For our users who need a read-aloud feature at Khan Academy, we often recommend the use of a screen reader.

Although Khan Academy doesn't have a text-to-speech engine built into it, the platform itself is compatible with some third-party screen readers to serve that functionality.

We've tested various portions of our site with what we believe to be the most popular screen reader + browser combinations:

• JAWS (for Windows) + Google Chrome

• VoiceOver (for Mac) + Safari

If none of these work, please submit a support request. Our support team will be more than happy to help you. 

Dustin
Community Support

From Colleen Carter:

"How can a visually impaired student access the program?  I need for a blind student to have access to the math program.[...] I need the student to be able to 'view' the problem in a NON-visual manner?  Is this even possible?"