First open a new project in VB and in the menu bar click Project -> References. Then in that list search for Microsoft Speech Object Library and check it, then click OK. [see image below]

Then in your form, create a TextBox control. Just drag and drop it to the form or double click the control. Then resize it, position it as you like. [see image below]

Let’s do the coding:

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Dim voice As New SpVoice
Dim toSpeech() As String
 
Private Sub Text1_KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer)
 
If KeyAscii = 32 Then
     toSpeech() = Split(Text1.Text, " ")
     voice.Speak (toSpeech(UBound(toSpeech)))
     ElseIf KeyAscii = 13 Then
     KeyAscii = 0
End If
 
End Sub

Here is a brief explanation of the code. First we declare voice as new SpVoice object and toSpeech() as a dynamic array String. As you can see the array has no size, so that we can size the array while the code is running.

Next, in the KeyPress event of our TextBox, The KeyAscii 32 is Space key value in your keyboard and if that value is equal to the KeyAscii, the Text1.Text will split each word with ” “(white space) delimiter. Then the voice.Speak will read the last item of the array toSpeech(). And if the KeyAscii value is equal to 13 which is Enter/Return Key, the keyAscii will set to 0 and the Enter/Return Key is disabled in your keyboard.

In other words, whenever the user hit Space Key the voice will read/speak the last word of the string in the Text1.txt. If the user hit Enter/Return Key, that key will disable.

That’s it, done. As for using the functionality of the library, I’m still experimenting.

Here is the file, if you want you can download it here.

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