Talking Guide FAQ

: June 8, 2024
: DirecTV

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What is Talking Guide?

Talking Guide is a text to speech setting on your Genie® DVR that allows audio output to accompany your DIRECTV on-screen textual menus and guides. This screen reader feature significantly improves the television experience for our visually impaired users by empowering them to make informed decisions about entertainment, making the ability to channel surf and find information about unfamiliar channels or content more accessible.

How can I get Talking Guide?

If you already have a Genie® DVR, follow the instructions below on how to enable the Talking Guide feature. If you do not have a Genie® DVR or are having problems enabling the Talking Guide feature, call 1.800.DIRECTV for immediate assistance.

How do I enable Talking Guide?

When the set top box is turned on, press the INFO button.
When the banner appears (it usually takes about a second after pressing the INFO button), press the RIGHT arrow once. This will place you in a menu that contains options for closed captions as well as talking guide.
Press the DOWN arrow 3 times. The set top box will start speaking at this point, and will alert a user to press SELECT to turn talking guide on. If a user moves off this option without pressing SELECT, speech output will stop.
Press SELECT. At this point talking guide is on and you will be exited out of the info banner.
Note that once you enable talking guide, your settings have been saved. Speech will remain on until you disable it. Talking guide speech rate can be found by pressing MENU, navigating to settings, pressing SELECT, and then choosing “Accessibility”. From there, press the DOWN arrow once to Talking Guide. Scroll to the right to and press the DOWN arrow to get to speech rate.
You can also enable or disable talking guide from this menu.

How do I use Talking Guide on my Genie® Remote?

Starting at the top of the remote, there are two rubber buttons on the left and right hand sides of the remote, with a slight indentation in the middle. The one on the left is ON, the one on the right is OFF.

Just below that is a row of three rubber buttons. The button on the left is GUIDE, where you can find currently airing programming in a grid format, with channels as rows and time (in half hour increments) as columns. The guide has information for shows and movies, everything airing on every channel from the current time up to 14 days in the future. The button in the middle is MENU, where you can change settings, browse for TV shows and movies, and search for something. The button on the right is LIST, where you would be able to find recorded TV shows and movies as well as any movie rentals or purchases.

With your finger starting on the middle menu button, move your finger straight down until you feel a smooth round button. This button is SELECT, which allows you to choose or say ‘okay’. Surrounding the smooth, round select button is a directional cross, with keys for UP, DOWN, LEFT, and RIGHT. Each of the directional keys has a raised triangle indicating the direction as well. The LEFT arrow also doubles as a BACK button, which allows you to leave the current screen or interface and go to the previous screen.

With your finger on the right directional arrow, there are rubber buttons immediately above and below it. The one below the right arrow is INFO and the one above the right arrow is EXIT. INFO gives you more information about something, while EXIT allows you to quickly exit the interface back into live TV.

With your finger back on the smooth, round SELECT button, move to the DOWN arrow, and then slightly below there. You will feel two distinct raised ridges with a gap in the middle. The ridge on the left is for VOLUME, and the ridge on the right is for CHANNELS. The ridges are toggles, with a single toggle up increasing volume or channel number, and a single toggle down will decrease volume or channel number. Holding the channel or volume toggles up or down will quickly increase or decrease volume and channel number.

The lower third of the remote has rubber buttons for a NUMBER PAD, arranged like a telephone num-pad. The bottom of the remote face can be identified because there is a flat smooth slope below the last row of rubber buttons.

Contact DirecTV

For immediate Talking Guide issues, call 1.800.DIRECTV.

Existing DIRECTV customers requesting the Talking Guide may be required to provide proof of eligibility if more advanced equipment is required on your Service.