Getting Started with Microsoft Narrator

What is Microsoft Narrator?

Microsoft Narrator is a piece of software called a screen reader. A screen reader does exactly what the name suggests: it reads out what is on the screen using synthesized speech. On Windows, there are three pieces of screen reader software that blind or low vision users will typically use.

1. Job Access With Speech (JAWS) from Freedom Scientific.
2. Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) a free, open-source screen reader from NVAccess.
3. Microsoft Narrator from Microsoft, built into the Windows operating system.

This guide is about Narrator. Though Narrator is the least used out of the three, it is the easiest to reach and useful for quick testing. For more comprehensive testing, NVDA is recommended to be used, as more people use it over Narrator and it is very similar to JAWS.

How to enable Narrator

There are two ways to enable Narrator:

1. Open the Start menu, type “Narrator”, and hit "Enter"
2. Press the keyboard combination Windows key+ Control+ Enter – This will also turn it off if it’s already on.

Both methods are equally valid, but the keyboard shortcut is faster.

The Narrator key

For some keyboard commands in Narrator, you have to press what is called the Narrator Key. By default, you can use the Insert or Caps Lock keys, but you can change it in the Narrator settings.

Changing the Narrator voice and other settings

If you wish to change the voice that Narrator uses or a number of other settings, you can do that in the Narrator settings in the Settings app.

For commands to navigate using Narrator, take a look at the Narrator Keyboard Commands Reference.