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Web Browsers and Text-to-Speech Solutions?

Posted by Cliff on from the technology-based-teaching-tools dept.

JZ_o8 asks: "I work for an online education company that needs to be able to accommodate students who, in some cases, are several grades behind in their reading level. We are investigating screen reading technologies that might serve as a supplement for these students. We have considered technologies such as AT&T Natural Voices Text-to-Speech Engine but the process is time-intensive and cumbersome. Development requires a desktop application which encodes text into a web audio format such as MP3. This of course raises issues about page updates and dynamic content which would render any accompanying speech files, obsolete. It seems like the best solution would be browser support, perhaps via a plug-in, that would give the user Text to Speech capabilities. Something like selecting a passage of text with the mouse and right-click to select 'Speak'. Or maybe a server-side solution that would dynamically generate media files for pages on the fly? Or just when they're changed? Does anyone have any suggestions - solutions that I am overlooking. This seems like a useful and logical piece of technology....if it doesn't exist I wonder why not."

2 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Mac OS X has this feature by panck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just selected your article contents in my web browser (happens to be Safari, but this works in any browser) Then I chose the menu item Safari->Services->Speech->Start Speaking Text

    Even better, you can enable os X to speak the selected text via a user-defined keystroke, or even all the text underneath the cursor. (in the Speech Preference Panel)

    If you're using windows though, I dunno..

    --
    "What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
  2. Cart before the horse? by ComputerSlicer23 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Hmmm, there is a little part of me that is feeling like Clifford Stoll right now... What the hell are you doing having illiterate kids doing using a computer? Why don't you have them spend time in a remedial 1 on 1 session to teach them to read, instead of pushing them even further into material they can't read?

    I know that your only looking to fufil the request of your customers (in this case the schools), I find it incredibly worrisome, that people are worried about how to get around the fact that the student can't read instead of attempting to actually teach the student to read at the appropriate level. Especially since the ability to read is probably more important then absolutely anything they will learn thru the computer system. Learning to read would enable them to learn anything they want later in life on their own, without some damn computer to read to them....

    Kirby