In the first installment of this series, I provided you with an introduction to the text-to-speech feature included with XP. Now I’ll give you an overview on how to configure this feature.

Configuring TTS is very straightforward. Open the Speech applet within the Control Panel and the Speech Properties dialog box will appear. It allows you to control various TTS settings such as Voice Selection and Voice Speed.

Under Voice Selection, you can select the voice that you want to use. By default, there is only one voice available in XP called Microsoft Sam. Additional voices can be downloaded from various Web sites.

Once you have selected a voice using the drop-down arrow, you can preview the voice by clicking the Preview Voice button. Assuming that your computer’s speakers are already connected to your computer, the voice will read the default text displayed in the ‘Use the following text to preview the voice’ field. Alternatively, you can type in specific text to preview by highlighting the existing default text and typing in the text you want the voice to read.

Along with selecting a specific voice, you can also control the speed at which the voice reads text back to you. By dragging the slider you can increase or decrease the voice speed, although the default value of “Normal” tends to be fine for most people.

By clicking the Audio Output button you can select the audio output device. From the Text to Speech Sound Output Settings dialog box, select from one of the two options: User preferred audio output device or Use this audio output device. By leaving the default Use preferred audio output device option selected, the audio device used for all other sound is also used for TTS. Conversely, if there is more than one audio device installed on the computer, you can specify a separate audio output device for use with your speech programs.

The Text to Speech Sound Output Settings dialog box also includes a Volume button. This allows you to control the TTS volume. By selecting this button, the Master Volume dialog box will appear letting you to adjust the volume output levels.

As you will now see in the next installment of this series, once you have configured all the text-to-speech options, you can have XP read the text on your screen using the Narrator.