LiveWell RERC Releases Amazon Echo Skill That Reads TechWatch and LiveWell News Blogs

Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Information and Communications Technology Access (LiveWell RERC) development staff recently released an Amazon Echo Skill that will read aloud the latest posts from our two blogs, TechWatch and LiveWell News.  The new skill can be installed on the Amazon Alexa app and then utilized on any Amazon Echo product.  The skill taps into the RSS feeds from our blogs and is called the LiveWell News Skill.    Once enabled, saying the command “Alexa, what’s the news”, or “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing,” will allow your Echo to read aloud the latest LiveWell RERC news feeds.  A user will only get information if it has been updated within the past week.  The LiveWell RERC developer of the new skill from Duke University, Leighanne Davis, says “The new skill will make the news feeds more accessible and convenient to a variety of users by providing speech output.”

To enable the LiveWell RERC News Echo skill:

  1. In the Alexa app go to Settings ->
  2. Flash Briefing ->
  3. Get more Flash Briefing content ->
  4. Search for LiveWell RERC News ->
  5. Enable the skill.
  6. After enabling the skill go back to the Flash Briefing page (settings -> Flash Briefing) to change the order of news you hear.