JAWS Voice Profiles

Creating a New Voice Profile with JAWS

For a long time, altering voice settings in JAWS such as language, rate and character was achieved by going into different configuration screens and making the necessary changes on a global or per application basis. These days, while many other settings in JAWS still operate in this way, settings for controlling the voice now all reside in one place under the Voice Profile banner.

So what exactly is a voice profile? Well, this neat feature lets you change between already configured voice settings on the fly. For example, you can save some custom voice settings for those times when you want to read something comfortably with a nice voice. Alternatively, you might want to have specific voice settings set up for when you are in a particular program, perhaps using more or less punctuation announcements. A voice profile then is a saved batch of voice settings, giving you the option of loading them in on an ad-hoc basis.

All the action happens in the Voice Adjustment dialog box so if you have never explored this before then I suggest you do now:

Navigate to the Voice Profile dialog box

1. With JAWS running, press ALT TAB to move to the main JAWS program window. Alternatively, if you are running JAWS from the System tray, use INSERT J to open the main JAWS menu.
2. In the JAWS window, press ALT to move to the Menu Bar and open the Options menu.
3. In the Options menu, choose Voices
4. In the Voices submenu, press ENTER to open Voice Adjustment...
5. Focus now moves into the Voice Adjustment dialog box, use the TAB key to move around and listen to the relevant options there. Remember to use INSERT F1 for a bit of additional information on the features if you don't understand something.

Now that you have had a browse around the voice adjustment dialog, you'll have a pretty good idea of the aspects of voice behaviour that you might want to adjust. Some of the more popular tweaks are:

• Language: Use this control to change the language (if your speech engine supports multiple languages of course!)
• Punctuation: Here you can change the amount of punctuation announced and there are four settings - All, Most, Some, None.
• Speech rate: Use this slider control to change the speed of the speech. Move the slider left for a slower pace and right to make it faster.
• Context: Use this control if you want to change the voice for when the JAWS cursor is running, or for the tutor messages only and so on. The default setting here is all contexts, as you generally want your voice changes to apply across the board.

All of the above and more can be configured then saved as a custom Voice Profile. For example, you could save one configuration with all the settings for when you want to switch to a fast reading configuration (high speech rate, no punctuation etc) or a configuration for more quality reading (more natural sounding synthesizer and rate of speech). In fact, this latter scenario sounds like a good idea so I'm going to use that as my aim for the walkthrough.

Create a Voice Profile

In this example I am going to create a custom voice profile based around the Microsoft Anna SAPI 5 speech engine that is part of my Windows installation (by the way, SAPI stands for Speech Application Programming Interface). I actually have a bit of a soft spot for this engine and it's one I have always liked the sound of - although feel free to choose a different synthesizer depending on what you have installed already. Remember too that if you don't have any other synthesizers installed you can create some new profiles using the tried and trusted default Eloquence synth. Anyway, whatever you choose, the basic approach to create a new Voice Profile is this:

1. Move focus to the JAWS program window and open the Options menu. Choose Voices.
2. In the submenu, choose Voice Adjustment...
3. Focus will move to the Name Profile combo box in the Voice Adjustment... dialog box. Change the current profile setting from "Eloquence" to another existing profile (what you choose depends on the synthesizer you want to use, so some trial and error may be required. For example, my Microsoft Anna synth is SAPI 5.)
4. Depending on what you have chosen, the new profile loads in and the voice may change. This now becomes the base profile that can be used to create some custom settings. Press TAB to move on.
5. Move to the Language combo box and change this if necessary. (Remember that the overall choice is determined by how many languages your chosen synthesizer supports.) With this set, press TAB to move on.
6. Configure the Adjust setting as appropriate, for a blanket change make sure it is set to "All Contexts." However if you only want to alter the voice for certain aspects of the JAWS echo, such as changing the voice for tutor messages only, then set this control accordingly. When you're done, TAB on.
7. The Rate slider control will eventually come into focus, use the following keys to fine tune your preferred settings:
• HOME: Moves the slider bar to 0%. (extremely slow)
• END: Moves the slider bar to 100%. (extremely fast)
• PAGE UP: Moves the slider forwards in increments of 10%. (speed up)
• PAGE DOWN: Moves the slider backwards in increments of 10%. (slow down)
• UP ARROW / RIGHT ARROW: Moves the slider forwards in increments of 1%.
• DOWN ARROW / LEFT ARROW: Moves the slider backwards in increments of 1%
8. Next up is Punctuation and this control gives you four basic categories to choose from:
   • All: All punctuation is spoken.
   • None: No punctuation is spoken.
   • Some: By default, punctuation such as brackets and quotation marks are not spoken.
   • Most: By default, punctuation such as colons, quotation marks and brackets are spoken, apostrophes and commas (for example) are not.
   In this example, I don't really want a lot of punctuation being announced as it disturbs the flow of the text, so I have changed the setting of "Most" to "Some." Of course, if you are creating a profile for specific programs, then you may want all punctuation set.
9. The Person combo box is up next. In this example, I have a choice of several distinct SAPI 5 engines and I can choose the one that feels most appropriate. Again, some trial and error is required here.
10. Towards the end of this dialog box, you will encounter two edit fields labelled "Spell Rate Change Percent" and "Upper Case Pitch Change Percent". The former determines the speed of speech when a word is sounded out (when you use INSERT NUMBERPAD 5 pressed twice) while the second field determines the pitch raise that JAWS uses to indicate capitalisation. Change these if you want to experiment, otherwise leave the defaults in place and move on with TAB.
11. Eventually, focus will move to a "Save As..." button. However, before you press SPACEBAR to activate it you may wish to TAB around the dialog box once again to check your settings. Having done that, activate "Save As".
12. The "Save Voice Profile" dialog box only contains one text field. Type in the name for your Voice Profile and press ENTER to save it.
13. That's it done - your new Voice Profile should now appear in the drop down list associated with the Name Profile combo box, the first control you have focus on in the main Voice Adjustment... dialog box.

Okay, so now that you have a custom profile in place - it's time to test it out!

1. Open a file in MS Word, or type a few lines of text in a new Word document, and read them as normal.
2. Move back to the top of the document with CONTROL HOME then press the keystroke of INSERT CONTROL S. The "Choose a Voice Profile" dialog box will open.
3. The first combo box is labelled "Default" while the second will be labelled with your current application. So, if you were in MS Word then the label will be "For Word", if you were in MS Excel the label will be "For Excel" and so on.
4. TAB between each combo in the dialog box and set them accordingly. If you want to simply change the voice overall and work using that different configuration then choose your custom Voice Profile in the Default combo box. To then change back to your normal profile, you will have to come back here and choose it again.
5. If you want to use your new profile but apply it only to the current application, then select your Voice Profile in the second combo box. Doing so means that your new Voice Profile will run but only in that specific application, when you ALT TAB away you'll be back to the selected Default profile.
6. Set the options as necessary and confirm with the OK button. Note that the changes you make here will be saved in your JAWS settings - in other words, the changes are permanent until you change them over again.

Phew. Now that you understand the basics of creating custom Voice Profiles, try and spend some time to think about how this functionality might benefit you. We've touched on a few example scenarios in this article but there's a load of other combinations that might be useful. So, have a bash and experiment!

(And don't worry about creating too many profiles either because you can use the Delete button in the Voice Adjustment dialog box to get rid of the ones you don't want any more.)

Have fun!

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