When I enter data from field sheets, I like to have the computer read it back to me so I can double-check it. There are different text-to-speech accessibility features built in to various programs and operating systems, as well as stand-alone screenreaders, and some work better than others.
My work computer is Windows 11, and I’m entering data in Excel. The “speak cells” tools in Excel are painfully, painfully slow — it’ll only read back about one number a second, whether I advance it manually or automatically. Fortunately, I found a better way!
Copy a block of data into Notepad. It’s going to be read row-by-row. Only copy over what you want to have the computer read to you, whether that’s just the data, or some/all of the identifier columns.
Start Windows Narrator. The shortcut key to turn Narrator on or off is the Windows/Start key + Control + Enter.
In Notepad, put your cursor on the first row of data, and Narrator should read it to you. (If not, use the arrow keys to move down a row and back up.) Use the down arrow key to advance to the next row, and it’ll read that one. Repeat, moving quickly and efficiently down the data, and there you go!
You can change the voice and the reading speed by going into the Windows “Speech” control panel (different from “Speech Recognition”).
Why copy the data into Notepad? If you use Narrator in Excel, it reads out the cell’s column and row (e.g., “A-23”) before reading the cell’s contents. That’s important for other accessibility uses, but it gets in the way if all you want is to have the computer read back the data.
There is a way to kinda-sorta change the reading speed in Excel, but it’s not very helpful. In the “Speech Recognition” control panel (the one that looks like a holdover from an earlier version of Windows), there is a “Text to Speech” tab. And that controls the Excel voice. But the problem isn’t really the speed of speaking the number, it’s that Excel pauses for most of a second before speaking the number (even with advancing manually by pressing enter to speak). Changing the speed of the voice doesn’t seem to speed up that pause at all. So speeding up the voice with that option ends up giving you a long pause, a very quickly spoken number, and then a long pause before the next number is spoken.
Civic Ecology 