Screen readers work with text-to-speech algorithms. In order to use the correct algorithm, the screen reader must receive a signal that tells it the language of a document or part of a document.

Primary language

The most important setting is a document’s primary language. Depending on the version of your program, the primary language may correspond to the spell-check language or you may be able to set it separately. Here’s how it works with the “spell-check” variant:

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• File > Options > Language
• Under “Office Authoring and Editing Languages”, select the desired document language and set it as “default”.

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Section language

MS Word also allows you to set the language for individual passages as needed.

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• Highlight the passage that differs from the primary language.
• At the bottom of the program window, click on the language that is displayed (the document language).
• In the window that appears, define the language for the highlighted passage.

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Foreign words

Screen readers will usually mispronounce foreign words in a text. However, in a university context they are often unavoidable. You can assume that your blind students will generally be able to understand such terms.