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Feature Request: Text to speech for articles

Caitlin Anderson
  • Edited

We are currently looking at ways to make our Help Center as accessible as possible. We will soon be uploading videos via Vimeo and using CC (closed captions) to assist hearing impaired users, however I have not been able to find any features that allow Text to Speech in Help Center articles to assist sight impaired users.

I emailed Support as well as searched in Marketplace however this feature does not seem to be on anyone's radar.

I would love to see this as an option for Help Center articles as accessibility for our users is essential. Thanks!

3 Comments

  • Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Caitlin Anderson

    Thank you for your question.

    While we don't have a built-in text-to-speech capability we are striving to live up to the WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard which includes support for screen readers to read both article content, navigation, Image alt text etc. in our out-of-the-box experience. We test this with all the most commonly used screen readers so any user can use the screen reader of their choice.

    You should note that if you make code customizations to your Help Center theme you can break some of the accessibility support we have built-in if the theme developer is not aware of accessibility. 

    You can read more about Accessibility in all the Zendesk products in:

    Our documentation team is working on an article specific to Help Center accessibility that we expect to publish within the next couple of weeks so I would recommend you follow the Accounts and Billing section.

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  • Caitlin Anderson

    Thanks for the info, Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen ! Do you know whether an 'read-aloud' function will ever be in the works for article pages? 

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  • Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Caitlin Anderson

    I will never say never, but we don't have it on the roadmap and I don't expect it in the future since this functionality is included in most operating systems (macOS and Windows), some browsers and there are many free extensions, apps, and plugins for it.

    Btw here's the help center specific article I mentioned was underway; Making your help center accessible. It has just been published.

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