turning text to speech off kindle fire hd

[punkrock peacock]

So I turned on text to speech to see how it works, but now I can't turn it off! I know how to turn it off, but I can't pull down my status bar to get to the settings. I click on the top & it just keeps telling me what time it is; nothing can be pulled down! I've restarted the device & the text to speech is still on & my status bar still inaccessible. Please help me!!