Text+to+Speech

Text To Speech Technology
By Douglas Waclawski

It is exactly as the name states. If you can’t read or see the text, this software will read the text for you out loud. This allows for a large group disabled people to be able to understand what is written on websites, in books and in magazines who normally won’t have that access. This software can even take material written in other languages, translate it and then speak it back to us in a different language.
 * What is Text To Speech Technology?**

There are many products out there, but I will discuss two free products.
 * What products are out there?**

The first and probably the most used program is Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is a free software application that almost every computer has installed on their computer right now with Macintosh and Windows. Normally, this software is used to view PDF’s. What people don’t know is that all you have to do to have this software read to you out loud, is go to “View” on the menu bar, click on “Read Aloud” and then finally click on “Activate Read Aloud”. (See picture below) Once you have done this, all you have to do is highlight text in any PDF and it will read it out loud. I have included a video link to that explains this in detail here: [] The biggest drawback to this program is that it only works with PDF formatted text. Most text that people will be confronted with is text from web pages and word processing programs. The good thing is that most word processors allow you to save your work as a PDF file. Of course, this means that you would have to convert all of your work and documents into PDF files. The good news is that this is free.
 * //Adobe Reader//**

Some other drawbacks to this software is that it has limited technical support. You get what you pay for. This software also doesn’t let you adjust the speed or tone of the software. This can make a difference for some students on whether they can understand what is being read or not. That being said, when I tested Adobe Reader’s Text To Speech function, it sounded pretty good as far as these readers go. Some text to speech programs can sound so mechanical many people can’t understand or stand using them for long.

//**Text To Speech Imtranslator**// [] Imtranslator is actually a free language translator and a text to speech program in one. This website will read back most written languages in the language of your choice. So, if you want to hear your work in Chinese, go for it. You must copy the text and paste in the blank text box or you can type text that you want read. This program lets you choose the language you want by picking a language from a drop dialog box. You can change the speed and have both or female or male voice read the text to you. (See the picture below) (Screen shot taken of []).

The screen is very cluttered and has lots of advertisements on it. It is hard to see where the control buttons are and to figure out where to paste the text. This program would not work well with students who get distracted or who cannot figure out software programs on their own.

The English voice sounds good and is pretty clear. Some of the other languages sound pretty rough. You would not want to use this program to see how words are pronounced in a different language. This program highlights the words as they are being said which may be helpful LD students.

Overall this is a pretty good text to speech program, but it can be tiring to keep pasting text in the program. Since this is a web-based program, it can be run on both Macintosh and PC computers. There is a searchable help reference, but no personal support.

While there are drawbacks to this program, you do get more than you pay for here.

Resources

Adobe Accessibility Center. Retrieved on September 19, 2011, from [].

Imtranslator. Screen shot taken on September 19, 2011 from [].