Fire Vox

Fire Vox is an open source, freely available talking browser extension for the Firefox web browser. Think of it as a screen reader that is designed specifically for Firefox. 

In addition to the basic features that are expected of screen readers, such as being able to identify headings, links, images, etc. and providing navigational assistance, Fire Vox provides support for MathML and CSS speech module properties. It also works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. 

Fire Vox Features

• Price - FREE. 
• A self-voicing browser for everyone - Fire Vox is designed to accommodate different users with different needs. For visually impaired users, all Fire Vox commands are keyboard activated. In addition, the keyboard commands can be easily reconfigured in the self-voicing Fire Vox Options menu to avoid conflicts with other accessibility software products or to suit personal preferences. For sighted users who need a screen reader, such as web developers interested in testing their webpages or educators who work with visually impaired students, Fire Vox's highlighting feature makes it easy to keep track of where it is reading from on a page. This highlighting feature is also useful for dyslexic users and partially sighted users.
• Close integration with Firefox - Because Fire Vox works directly within the Firefox browser, it always provides users with a live view of the webpage, rather than a frozen snapshot which is what many other screen readers provide. This means that Fire Vox has the ability to handle dynamic pages better.
• One cursor, one mode philosophy - Fire Vox is built on the idea of providing access for web browsing as opposed to forcing people to use a completely different way to browse. Fire Vox uses the visible Firefox cursor and respects that positioning whenever possible, and there is no need to switch between modes.
• Support for Live Regions marked up with WAI-ARIA - The WAI-ARIA markup is designed to make AJAX accessible. It gives me great pleasure to announce that Fire Vox is helping to lead the way towards AJAX accessibility by being the very first assistive technology to support Live Regions marked up with WAI-ARIA.
• Support for the CSS 3 Speech Module - Imagine how nice it would be if the way a web page is read aloud by a screen reader could be styled with CSS, just like its font and layout. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell a screen reader exactly how to speak something tricky such as Roman numerals, oddly spelled titles, etc. Well, the CSS 3 speech module gives web developers those abilities. And unlike other screen readers, Fire Vox has support for these speech module properties.
• Direct MathML support - MathML support is built into Firefox, and Fire Vox will read MathML back using Abraham Nemeth's mathspeak rules. There are no additional plugins that you need to buy or install to get MathML working.
• Site Specific Enhancements - If the option to "Use site specific enhancements" is turned on, Fire Vox will automatically retrieve and apply the latest AxsJAX scripts to improve your web surfing experience. AxsJAX is a framework for injecting accessibility enhancements into web pages - these enhancements are specifically tailored to make their respective web pages speak intelligently.
• Constant Evolution - Charles Chen is the developer of Fire Vox and works hard to keep Fire Vox up to date, enable it to support the latest web technologies, and to do an even better job on what it already does.

For more information and a free download, visit the Fire Vox Homepage.

Get Involved

Contact the owner(s) through the project's website to learn about involvement opportunities:  Fire Vox Homepage.