By Tyler, 26 August, 2013
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
I recently heard about Chromevox, the Chrome browser extension that would read web content. I use Safari, which, for me, is fine for everyday use, but web apps like Google Drive are a pain. Would this web screenreader enable access to this type of content with Chrome if I installed it on my Mac?
Comments
It It depends. I often use
Just Installed it on My Mac
At least 5 years
ChromeVox has been available for at least five years.
It works great with Google web apps (Docs, Drive, Inbox, etc.) and other dynamic interactive web apps...
Revisiting Chromevox
So, I thought I'd revisit Chromevox this week both for my own sake and to try and troubleshoot a problem that my sister is having on her MacBook Air. I already had the latest update to Chrome on here, which was just rolled out this week. Immediately upon starting Chrome, I got Alex in a higher pitch indicating that Chromevox was off. So I went to my personal website, turned off VoiceOver, and enabled Chromevox with the command that is listed on the website for this extension. However, what I got was dead silence. So I turned VoiceOver back on and arrowed around, and I was still on my website. I did a Command-W to close my site, and got the sound from Chromevox indicating that a website has been exited. I then tried to go to the Chromevox options page and was successful. But apparently something is wrong with the TTS engine that comes bundled with Chromevox because all I'm getting are the VO voices listed in that submenu. Should I just reinstall Chromevox and see what happens? The release notes on their website indicate that it is still at version 1.31 .
Available for other platforms?
Hello,
Is CromeVox available on other platforms, particularly Windows? On these other platforms, how developed is it?
ChromeVox works wherever Chrome does
www.chromevox.com works on all 4 desktop OSs, as it is an extension for Chrome
Re: Available for other platform--Chromevox only works in Chrome
I don't have a Mac yet, and have the drive app on my iPhone. I use Chromevox here on my Linux box to access my Google Drive all the time. I use it less on Windows because my Drive is synced through the Windows app.
One thing you have to keep in mind is Chromevox only works in the Chrome browser (or Chromium on Linux). That means when you need to do something like upload a file and go to search for it, your operating system's screen reader has to take over, like NVDA on Windows. I never got around to setting that automatic switch up for NVDA,, on the other hand, Linux switches between Orca and Chromvox very smoothly in Chromium for some reason .
I found it much easier to just use Firefox with NVDA to log into Google and fool with Drive and Gmail, etc.
Hope that makes sense.