Text To Speech

Text to Speech – Make your computer TALK to You!

Text To Speech (TTS), also known as speech synthesis, can be a part of every Windows PC. TTS is also available for Mac and Linux, but this discussion will focus on Windows PC's. Text To Speech simply means that you can have your computer speak selected text, usually in a syhthezied voice.

In Windows, the TTS function is implemented through an API (Application Program Interface), in this case either Speech API 4 or 5. Because these API's are open to programmers, a number of programs are adding TTS to their applications. A more detailed explanation can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis.

For the moment, I'll mention a couple of programs which you can use for TTS. All of these have free versions. Usually, the main features you get with the paid version is the ability to covert the text directly to an audio file and the ability to access more voices.

NaturalReader http://www.naturalreaders.com/ converts any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words. The paid version of NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or Ipod.

yRead http://www.spacejock.com/yRead.html – uses the default SAPI5 voices but, you can install and use other voices. Nice feature is the ability to directly download ebooks from Project Gutenberg. Highlighting of text currently not working. Nice simple interface.

E-Text Reader http://www.premier-programming.com/download/free_trials.htm Most of the other programs at this site are demo's but the E-Text Reader is a full functioning text reader. You can also create your own text and have it read back to you.

Word 2003 If you have Office 2003 installed, it has TTS for Excel already installed. To use TTS in Word, here's the MS Knowledge Base article http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=287120

We'll talk later about SR (Speech Recognition) and sources for free digitized books.