Using Hear2Read on Android Devices

Using Hear2Read TTS on Android devices requires installing the TTS Engine and one or more Indic TTS voice database using ADD VOICES button on the Engine App’s Home page.

Talkback for vision-impaired (VI) users: VI users always have Talkback on in order to be able to use Android devices with touch screen. To use Hear2Read TTS, please do the following:

  • Go to “Text-to-speech output” setting under “Language and Input”.
  • 2. Select Indic Hear2Read as the “Preferred engine”.
  • 3. Click on the gear symbol (spoken as “launch engine settings button” by Talkback).
  • 4. The first entry on the screen is “Language”. If it shows the Indic voice that you wish to use, you are all set.
  • 5. If the “Language” shown is “Use system language” which is generally English, then click on the Language. It will bring up a pop up menu listing Hear2Read voice(s) installed on the device and “Use system language” (first entry in the list). Select the Indic voice to use.
  • 6. Go back to “Text-to-speech output” settings screen. The last entry on the screen “Default language status” should display the selected voice name followed by “is fully supported”.
  • 7. Click on the line above “Listen to an example” to play a short demonstration of speech synthesis for the selected voice.

@Voice Aloud Reader was originally designed for use by sighted users to read text content displayed by other Apps (such as web pages, email, TXT, DOC, DOCX, RTF files and eBooks). It can be used by VI users as well. It supports different ways to read depending on the content type – Android Share feature for web sites, open any file in any folder on the device, copy/paste, and “Open with” feature in other apps etc. Please see the User Guide or built-in Help for full details. It is available as Ad supported “Free” App or one can purchase Ad free version for a nominal price which varies from country to country.