OSX text-to-speech 'selection' not working in libreoffice

users
#1

Hi, (first time posting to this list)
I am print-disabled due to a vision impairment. I cannot read and write on
computer for very long without using text-to-speech.

There is native text-to-speech acros all osx apps which works well in all
web browsers, microsoft, adobe products and possibly all apps for osx which
works by selecting text and then using a keyboard command to start osx
reading the text. This is foundational to accessibility in osx.

In Libreoffice, when I select a block of text and use keyboard command, the
speech begins at the beginning of the document every time.

I would prefer to use libreoffice. Is there a work-around? If not, I would
call this defective. Help to help resolving it as a small voice out here.

Jacques

#2

Hi Jacques,

I don't use OSX, nor accessibility tools, so can't help with your specific problem. However, there might some useful information at <http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/accessibility/> (a web page on accessibility in LibreOffice).

There's also a separate LibreOffice mailing list focussed on accessibility issues, so it might be worth posting your query there as well:
- Subscribe by sending an email to <accessibility+subscribe@global.libreoffice.org> (you'll probably need to respond to a confirmation email, similar subscribing to this list)
- Post by sending an email to <accessibility@global.libreoffice.org>
- Other options for reading and posting to that list are listed at <http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/#accessibility>

It might also be worth trying an updated version of LibreOffice if you're not already using the latest.

Mark.

jacques revera wrote:

#3

Hi Jacques,

Hi, (first time posting to this list)
I am print-disabled due to a vision impairment. I cannot read and write on
computer for very long without using text-to-speech.

In Libreoffice, when I select a block of text and use keyboard command, the
speech begins at the beginning of the document every time.

I would prefer to use libreoffice. Is there a work-around? If not, I would
call this defective. Help to help resolving it as a small voice out here.

Unfortunately, there are several known bugs in accessibility in
LibreOffice running on OSX. Although things have improved slightly over
the past few years, much work still needs to be done to make LibreOffice
a truly accessible-compliant application on OSX.

Alex

#4

This seems to already be reported as bug 72408 in the LibreOffice
bugzilla reporting system. The problem was first reported against
LibreOffice 4.1, so it is already quite old, but probably existed before
that (as support for VoiceOver was even poorer in earlier versions of
LibreOffice).

Alex