Chromevox

By Tyler, 26 August, 2013

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

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?

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Comments

By KE7ZUM on Monday, September 9, 2013 - 16:52

It It depends. I often use chrome vox but I can use google chrome with voice over as well. AGainit all depends on my needs. But i'd say give it a try and see.

By Ekaj on Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - 16:52

Hello everyone. I just installed Chromevox on my Mac and am impressed. I haven't done much with it yet but it would be awesome if it works with Google Drive and all the other Google services. I, too, use Voiceover with Chrome and Safari, but it's great that this is now available.

By kevinchao89 on Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - 16:52

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...

By Ekaj on Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - 16:52

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 .

By TJT 2001 on Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - 16:52

Hello,

Is CromeVox available on other platforms, particularly Windows? On these other platforms, how developed is it?

By OldBear on Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - 16:52

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.