Win10 + FF only has English Voices available

[Nancy-Salpepi]

Test device Dell

Operating System Win10

Browser Firefox

Problem description For https://github.com/phetsims/qa/issues/917, Win10 + FF only has voices available in English. This isn't specific to my device--@stemilymill confirmed that she also only has English voices.

I have available voices with Win10 + chrome and with mac + FF.

[zepumph]

This seems to be what FireFox ships with. You can confirm this with a script like this: https://jsbin.com/ginanegoqu/edit?js,output

And https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43983845/speechsynthesis-api-for-chinese-firefox helped me find it.

I'm not sure how to support this. I couldn't find any docs for adding languages to Firefox, but I'm sure you can. . .

Though https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47379725/how-do-i-add-a-voice-language-to-speechsynthesis doesn't seem promising.

I'm tempted to say we don't support non english voices on Firefox, but I feel like I should do a bit more poking first. Tagging @jessegreenberg for him to see that Firefox only has English voices.

[zepumph]

I thought that perhaps I could just switch language, downloading a language pack and that that would fix things, but no luck:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-firefox-another-language#w_switch-firefox-to-another-language

I did lots of combos, including restarting the browser with a different language active. I really don't know how to get more voices into Firefox.

[jessegreenberg]

That stack overflow offers a handy link: https://jsbin.com/ginanegoqu/edit?js,output. All of the non-english voices are prefixed with "Google" so it makes sense they are Chrome specific.

Firefox seems to be providing operating system languages only. On Windows 10 I went to "Speech" settings and added spanish voices with this control:

After restarting FF I can see all of the spanish voices in https://jsbin.com/ginanegoqu/edit?js,output and speak with them.

We might just have to provide users with the steps to do this. Or maybe it is safe to say that on their devices they will already have their local languages installed so it will generally work well already.

[zepumph]

Ahh yes, thanks. I can confirm this. I added spanish voices in windows settings, and restarted firefox and the voices showed right up.

TLDR: Adding voices to windows OS will add the voices to Firefox automatically.

@amanda-phet is this voices weirdness the kind of thing to put into teacher tips?

@Nancy-Salpepi can you add a note to QA, perhaps under the voicing section even though this isn't technically voicing.

[Nancy-Salpepi]

Bullet added to QA book under Additional notes about Voicing

Only English voices may be present with Win + Firefox. To add more voices to your device, go to Settings > Speech Settings > Manage Voices. Click on Add Voices Button.

[zepumph]

I'll just leave @amanda-phet assigned to document this, if needed, in teacher tips or elsewhere. This doesn't block our dev test though. Thanks all!

[chrisklus]

@zepumph and I discussed with @amanda-phet and teacher tips sounds great, leaving open an assigned.