Listen with Alexa

Introduction to Talking News on Alexa

Alexa is Amazon's personal digital assistant and can be controlled by speaking to it. It runs on various devices but perhaps the simplest for visually impaired users is a smart speaker such as the Amazon Echo Dot. Computers, tablets, smartphones and even some smart TVs can also be used.

Services on Alexa are known as 'Skills' and you can listen to our recordings using the skill called ‘Talking Newspapers’.

First-Time set-up of Alexa

To use the Talking Newspapers skill for the first time you need to enable it. Using a device running Alexa say:

“Alexa, enable Talking Newspapers”.  You will hear a series of prompts from Alexa which, when followed, will confirm ‘Talking Newspapers’ has been enabled.

Using Alexa once it has been enabled

After the Talking Newspapers skill has been enabled on your device, you can simply say:

"Alexa, open Talking Newspapers". Alexa will prompt you to choose a town and then a publication - or if you are a regular user it may offer to resume from a previous point or play the latest edition. There are five sets of Sheffield Talking News recordings available through Alexa, and if you know the name of the one you want you can go directly to it. For example to play the latest edition of the news, Say:

"Alexa, ask Talking Newspaper for Sheffield Talking Newspaper"

The full list of our titles is as follows, and Alexa will list them for you if you just choose Sheffield.

Their names are:

• Sheffield Talking Newspaper

• Sheffield Talking Newspaper previous edition

• Sheffield Talk About magazine

• Sheffield Talk About magazine previous edition

• Sheffield Out and About

Navigating within ‘Talking Newspapers’

Once you are into an edition of the news, the magazine or ‘Out and About’, you can skip from one track to the next by saying, “Alexa next track”. Alternatively you can skip back a track by saying, “Alexa, previous track.” If you say, “Alexa, start over”, Alexa takes you back to the start of the item.

“Alexa, pause” will pause an item and “Alexa, play” will start it playing again.

Saying “Alexa, cancel” will take you back to the start of the current track.

"Alex, Stop" or "Alexa, Quit" will end the skill.