Claro Knowledge Base and FAQs

Installation and getting started

Solving problems with Scanners and Scanning

Solving problems with Microsoft Word

If you encounter any problems using ClaroRead with Microsoft Word, such as;

Then it is possible that there is an issue with Word "blocking" ClaroRead from interacting with it.

To rectify, then try the following:

If the above items do not fix the issue, then you will need to re-install Microsoft Word. The re-installation of Word should fix the issue. If this still hasn't solved the problem, then we suggest you run a System Restore to a date when you know the operating system was allowing Word and ClaroRead to work together.

If you have a problem with the Microsoft Office Clipboard appearing when you do not want it to, then click the Options button at the bottom of the Clipboard pane at the right of the Word document and makes sure "Show Office Clipboard when Ctrl+C Pressed Twice" is not checked. This works on Office 2003 and later: contact us if you have an earlier version of Word or Office.

Solving problems with Speech

First check that sound is working: either start Windows Media Player and press Play or try opening a .wav file in the Media folder in your Windows folder.

If you can't get speech to work (none of the voices, RealSpeak or Windows XP Microsoft Sam or Windows Vista Anna, say anything) and you receive an error message when opening the Speech applet in the Control Panel (for example "The requested task cannot be carried out because the necessary speech engine could not be created. Please select a different engine and/or a different audio device.") then you can try Microsoft Fix 838659. Detailed step-by-step instructions.

If you select a voice in the Speech applet in Control Panel and get the message This voice cannot be played. Please try selecting another voice or selecting a different audio output device then the voice may have been uninstalled, even though it still appears in the Speech list, or the RealSpeak voices on your machine may have been broken by another voice installer. Try uninstalling and reinstalling the affected voices: you can find them on the Claro CD. More details on broken RealSpeak voices.

Another thing to check: open Control Panel and the Speech Applet. Hit the Audio Output button. Make sure the first option "Use preferred audio device" is selected:

Picture of dialogue box: there is a two-option selection, and the first is selected.

If you try to open the Speech Control Panel Applet and select the Text To Speech tab and get the message "An exception occurred while trying to run "C:\WINDOWS\system32\shell32.dll,Control_runDll "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Speech\sapi.dpl",Speech" (it has a title of "RUNDLL") then the current system voice is broken. This can happen when incompatible voice installers clash with each other. Because the current system voice is not valid you cannot open the Speech applet, so you cannot change the current system voice. You have three options:

  1. Re-run the voice installer for the broken current system voice. This should let you open the Speech applet. Change the system voice to Microsoft Sam. Then uninstall the voices you do not need to use, then reinstall the voices you do need to use.
  2. Download and run SAPI5 Voice Remover, select the non-functioning voice from the list, and delete it from the machine. This removes the voice from Window's list of available voices, and the Speech applet when next run notices it isn't there and switches to another voice. The broken voice is not installed - it is still on your hard disk - but it will not work anywhere.
  3. (For the technical) You can change the default SAPI5 voice manually to Microsoft Sam by opening regedit, navigating to the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Speech\Voices and changing the value of DefaultTokenId to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Speech\Voices\Tokens\MSSam" (no quotation marks).

If one of the RealSpeak voices stops when it comes to some punctuation (e.g. a comma, semi-colon)_then try uninstalling and reinstalling the voice.

Some users running Windows Vista have reported that their RealSpeak voices will not work if User Access Control is disabled. Re-enable the security feature and try again.

You may find that the RealSpeak Russian Katerina voice speaks very slowly. Increase the voice speaking rate by selecting the Settings button and changing the slider to the maximum value (10). This will speak at a normal speed: higher rates are not possible with this voice.

You can make ClaroRead speak non-Western characters using a Western voice, for example reading Greek characters in chemistry using RealSpeak Daniel. You need to be an administrator, you may need your Windows installation CD, and only one non-Western language can be supported in addition to English - English and Cyrillic, or English and Greek are fine, but not Greek and Cyrillic.

  1. Open Control Panel > Regional and Language Options.
  2. Select the Advanced tab.
  3. In the "Language for non-Unicode programs" section select the language for the characters you want to read, for example Russian.
  4. Restart your machine.
  5. Open ClaroRead and Word.
  6. Select and copy one character to be spoken, e.g. "Я".
  7. Open ClaroRead settings and click the Pronounce button.
  8. Paste the character "Я" into the "Word to replace" box. This may take a couple of tries: if it does not work, copy and paste again.
  9. Type the English pronunciation into the "New Pronunication", e.g."ya" for "Я".
  10. Click the "Add\Replace" button and ensure the character and pronunciation appears in the list to the left.
  11. Click OK and OK the settings dialog.
ClaroRead should now correctly pronuounce the character "Я" as "ya" when it encounters it. You will have to do this with every character you wish to have pronounced.

Solving problems with magnification

If you use a Claro (or Sensory Software) product with magnfication (e.g. Lightning) on Windows Vista, you should have a Windows Experience Index for Graphics of 3.0 or more to run the program under Aero. Any lower than this and you may experience crashes and hangs, since the display system is too low-powered to perform effectively. However, you may find that some particular settings run fine, so if you stick to those then you will be okay - your computer will not suffer any damage from running the magnification software, even if your graphics card cannot support all the program's features. Guide to Windows Experience.

You may find it helpful to have your mouse pointer move to the position of active default button in a new window. You can turn this on by going to the Mouse Properties dialog in Control Panel, selecting the Pointer Options tab, and checking "Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box." and clicking OK.

Our magnification programs, such as Lightning, cannot magnify any area of the screen controlled by the Microsoft DirectX system. This means that videos in Windows Media Player will not display and full-screen graphical games will not work. Turn off magnification to view this content.