When an application needs your attention Mac OS X often gives no visible sign at all. An application “needing attention”, in Apple’s language, is one that’s waiting for you to tell it something before it can keep going and isn’t the app you’re currently working with. It could be Safari wanting you to confirm that you want it to quit the application, or TextEdit waiting for you to tell it a filename so it can save your word processing file, or anything else that the computer can’t do on its own.
Here’s how to set things up so the computer will use the system voice to tell you that an alert is being displayed, and which application is displaying it.
Open System Preferences – it’s the fourth item in the Apple menu (the shape) in the very top left corner of the screen as shown here:
In the “System” section, usually about the fourth line of icons in System Preferences, there is an icon labeled “Speech” which looks like an old fashioned radio microphone. Click on the Speech icon.
The Speech pane has sections labeled “Speech Recognition” and “Text to Speech”. Click on the “Text to Speech” section and you’ll see the option to announce when an application requires your attention – select that option.
You can also use the top section of this pane to select a system voice that you find easiest to listen to. If you use the voices a lot you may eventually choose to purchase a higher quality system voice or one that speaks your language.
- Ricky Buchanan
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