Text to Speech is offered as one of many accommodations that can be enabled for students from an assessment's online settings, as an accommodation from the student accommodation profile, or even for an individual item with the Text to Speech property. The Online Markup panel alone does not enable or disable Text to Speech as an online tool in an assessment, but can be used to control visibility of the Text to Speech functions for a given item or passage when TTS is enabled for use as an online tool on an assessment at any level (assessment, accommodation profile, or item).
Take a look at Online Markup for Item Bank Assessments to learn more about using the Text to Speech Markup options to enable or disable TTS functionalities for items and passages.
Where to Start
Once the student has logged into the Student Portal and started an assessment, students will be able to utilize Text to Speech options if permission has been granted.
- Text to Speech for Passages: If Text to Speech is enabled for passages, students can use the audio buttons located to the upper right of the passage to have the directions and passage read aloud to them.
- Text to Speech Audio Settings: Click the speaker button at the right end of the teal green tool buttons to open the Text to Speech Audio Settings window.
- Volume controls how loudly or softly the text is read aloud.
- Speaking Rate controls how fast the text is read aloud.
- Accent determines in what language the text should be read. Set Accent to “Spanish” if you have items written in Spanish to ensure they are pronounced correctly. This setting will not perform any translation.
- Text to Speech will highlight each sentence as it reads the whole passage aloud. By highlighting part of the passage, only the highlighted section will be read aloud when the play button is clicked. The Text to Speech feature will highlight the individual words in a different color as it reads the text aloud.
- Text to Speech for Items: If Text to Speech is enabled for items, students can use the audio buttons located to the upper right of each assessment item to have directions, items, and answer choices read to them. Text to Speech will highlight individual sentences as it reads and each word as it reads aloud. Students can also highlight individual parts of the item and click the play button to have that part read aloud.
Text to Speech - Control bar
When Text to Speech has been enabled for an assessment, you can hear items, answers, and passages read aloud by using the set of buttons in the upper right above them.
Text to Speech (TTS) Can Be Enabled for non-ELA Assessments: Enabling Text to Speech is no longer restricted to assessments with the Subject set to “ELA.” The TTS system can also read mathematical expressions in items when those expressions have been authored with the equation editor. Expressions that are created using only text formatting or that are displayed as images will still not be read aloud correctly.
Enhanced SSML options have been added to the Online Markup tool to customize how text will be read. Please visit Online Markup for Item Bank Assessments for additional information.