Firefox Support Forum

Hello,

We are adding accessibility features to the Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 5 Linux distribution based on Debian 12, and we would like to use the reading mode included in Firefox to enable smoother voice reading for visually impaired people.

Currently we are going to use the Svox Pico and eSpeak speech synthesis at the same time because in SVox Pico we do not have all the voices we need for our possible users, particularly Portuguese.

We have found how to make the synthesis used by Firefox's reading mode be SVox Pico by default instead of eSpeak, however this requires a modification in the /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf file.

To do this, simply put the default pico synthesis in this file:

DefaultModule pico

But this causes problems with other software that we intend to use.

We found how to make all the voices of a speech synthesis appear in the Firefox playback menu by going to about:config and doing a search for the word "narrate":

Option narrate

On the other hand, we cannot find how to modify the "narrate.voice" option to tell it to default to pico speech synthesis instead of eSpeak synthesis which is the first synthesis loaded by speech-dispatcher, because we must keep eSpeak as the first synthesis loaded and do not put a default synthesis in speechd.conf to maintain compatibility with software that we wish to use.

Do you have any tips or a manual that explains the possible options for the "narrate.voice" option?

Thanks in advance for your help.