ChromeVox on Desktop Linux

Starting ChromeVox

On Chrome OS, you can enable spoken feedback (ChromeVox) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Z.

Building and running Chrome OS on Desktop Linux

To test the version of ChromeVox that runs on Chrome OS while running a desktop Linux, you can build the Chrome OS version of Chrome.

First add chromeos=1 to your GYP_DEFINES. (More info on GYP_DEFINES here)

Now build Chrome as usual, e.g.:

ninja -C out/Release chrome

If you want speech, you just need to copy the speech synthesis data files to /usr/share like it would be on a Chrome OS device:

git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/assets
sudo mv assets /usr/share/chromeos-assets
cd /usr/share/chromeos-assets/speech_synthesis/patts
for f in *.zip; do sudo unzip $f && rm $f; done

After you do that, just run "chrome" (e.g. out/Release/chrome) and press Ctrl+Alt+Z, and you should hear it speak! If not, check the logs.

ChromeVox Next

To text ChromeVox Next, add #chromevox_next_test to the end of any url

...for example: http://google.com#chromevox_next_test

This next-generation version is not feature-complete but it's built on a new foundation that doesn't inject any JavaScript into web contents. It has better support for things like web views in apps, web components, and more.
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