Text to Speech Not Working

Did some looking around after it happened to me months ago too. It stopped speaking even though I right-clicked to press the start speaking button.

To get the speech option working you can try highlighting the text and pressing Option+Esc if you haven't yet.

The computer should speak then!

Hope it helps.

I too am facing the exact same problem.

Try reparing permissions with disk utility.

Problem still persists after repairing permissions. Issue is with Macbook Pro upgraded to Lion.

I have exactly the same problem on a new macbook pro after upgrading to Lion

I am having the same problem. The only way to get it to work is pasting into text edit and selecting speech from edit menu in the filebar. Also super slow when trying to change speech shortcut commands. I think this began agter installing additional optional voices, but I am not sure of this. (Another complaint, gestures: getting to the desktop is a pain in the butt. should have kept four fingers up.)

I am also having trouble with Speech. In OS X 10.6 I used Speech to read my ebooks, Word documents. It worked great. Since upgrading to OS X 10.7 Speech doesn't seem to work much at all. This is a huge issue for me. If anyone has a fix or some means of dealing with this problem, please share. Else I am going to have to downgrade back to OS X 10.6, and that will be a pain in the butt.

Same here.

Tried to change the system voice but didn't work either.

One weird thing is that I could hear the preview of some voices like Keiko (Japanese), Samantha (US), but after installing Samantha it didn't work.

Help!

This is frustrating. I recommend Apple products to students on the basis of their excellent accessibility. So, this particular bug is a problem for many.I hope it is fixed soon.

Meanwhile, I have a workaround that is not ideal, but better than nothing.

1) CREATE A SERVICE TO SPEAK HIGHLIGHTED TEXT

open Automator, chose FILE>NEW>SERVICE

select and double-click Speak Text from the Actions sidebar menu

SAVE and name it something memorable (e.g. "Alex Speaks")

QUIT

If you highlight text in any program, you can now have it speak to you by running this Service app. Simply highlight some text in any program, and right-click (or control click) to find "Alex Speaks" and click it. (Alternatively, you can excute it from the Services menu in the dropdown menu next to the apple symbol on the menubar at the top of your screen.)

2) CREATE A HOT KEY FOR THE SERVICE

go to System References

open Keyboard

click Keyboard Shortcuts

in the left-hand panel click Services

scroll down in the right-hand panel until you find “Alex Speaks"

double click on whitespace on at the extreme right hand end of the line that says "Alex Speaks"

type a key combination for the hotkey (make sure you choose something unusual).

make sure the check box next to “Alex Speaks” is selected

That's it! Now, if you select text in any application, and hit the hotkey for “Alex Speaks” the selected text will be read aloud, much like it did before Lion.

N.B.: This workaround is not as good as the real thing. First of all, the Service will not run via the hot key unless it is loaded into memory by selecting the service from the contextual menu first. Tthis has to be done for each application. secondly, once it starts reading it won't stop until it finishes the selection. This simple Automator app does not toggle off. Lastly, if it encounters a problem it may fail to work again unless you reboot.

Apple–please fix this!

Here is how I rectified my loss of text to speech, after LION:

1. Went to speech system prefrences and made sure the voices related options I wanted were on.

2. Then on a hunch went to sound preferences to check: (Sound Effects Tab).

3. Then went to: "Select sound out put devices"

4. Selected "internal speakers"

Success! At least for my circumstance.

Text to speech working well.

Many voices options in speech with Lion.

Hope this works for others.

Sorry spoke too soon. Based on my previous comments: Text to speech working only in email. Not in other application where it is a native feature, like Word...

First, I'm assuming everyone has tried simply restarting your computer?

If you have a problem with speech stopping working (after it was working) during a session you can also try force quitting the "coreaudiod" process (you can find this and do so from Activity Monitor). I was just having problems with speech and force quitting it fixed the problem. Just note that as soon as you force quit it the OS will spawn a new process. If you force quit it once and it still doesn't work chances are this fix won't help you.

Rebooting doesn't seem to solve the issue.

I recently went to genus bar and had them check it out. After about 5 hours of work, they decided it was some conflict in the system folder. They did a major reset of something (they wouldn't share with me what it was) and this did allow speech to work with the default key combination. But it only worked in Safari. Now it doesn't even do that.

My "fix" of creating a hot-key for service seems to work ok, though slow to load at first. Also I don't no how to toggle the speech OFF, once it starts; a function that worked fine prior to Lion.

I tried quiting coreaudio in Activity Monitor, but this seems to have no effect. It's strange but when I try this Activity Monitor says I need admin password to do this, but then it never opens a dialogue box requesting the password.

This continues to be a problem.