Show 23 -- Text to Speech

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Hello, and welcome to Disability 411, the podcast for disability professionals. I'm your host, Beth Case, and this is show number 23. Like I mentioned last time, we're quickly coming up on show number 25. And I'd like to ask your help with letting me know what your favorite episode's been. What's something that you learned you didn't know before that was useful? Storied or any feedback that you'd like to send me on the show so far, I'd really appreciate those. I'd like to put together some comments and feedback for show number 25. So if you have anything that you'd like to say just email me at disability411@jinkle.com, or you can send a voice recording that I'll play, whatever, anything goes, and we'll put all the stuff together for show number 25.

I do have a few announcements this week, I found out about this online conferences coming up November 6th thru 9th. It's called the Supporting Deaf People Online Conference 2006, and there are two focuses at this conference. One is what they're calling "deafhood/deafnisity", and the other one is interpreting. And this looks to be really interesting. I'm planning on signing up for myself. It is an online conference, from I can tell, it'll be very interactive, there will be the opportunity to host and talk to other people who are attending the conference, but the information will be available. And whenever you can attend, you don't have to go at a certain time. You can go on your own schedule.

And the information will be there for a month after the conference is over so that attendees can go back and look at things that they missed or look at things again. I really like this idea, I just like the idea of online learning because my schedule is usually chaotic, and I can't always promise to be in one place at a certain time in order to attend a webcast for example, or to go to a workshop, or it has to be done at that time. That's what's so nice about the ILRU webcast, is that, it's great if you can attend it live because you have the opportunity to ask questions, but if you can't, you still get to listen and read the information later. So I really appreciate the opportunity to learn things on my own schedule.

Which is part of why I put together Disability 411 is because I know you all have similar situations; it's hard to get to trainings. Either it's a time problem or a money problem, or a logistical problem, so I want to try and bring information to you, and that why that conference looks so interesting. So if you'd like to find out more about this online conference, I will have the URL on the disability 411 website.

It's really quite affordable. The price is in UK Pounds, it's 45 Pounds, which is approximately US$78, depending on the exchange rate, if you register before August 31st. After that it goes to 55 Pounds which is approximately US$95, so that's really quite affordable. So I will have the link to that on our show notes.

Another tool that I wanted to share with you is something put that's out by the HEATH Resource Center, and I've know I've talked about them before. But this is a toolkit that is intended for high-school guidance counselors and career counselors to help [xx] in working with students who had disabilities, in helping the students prepare for the transition, whether it's to a college or university or into the workforce or whatever. This is so needed. One of the biggest difficulties I see working in a community college are high-school students coming in completely unprepared for college, and I'm not talking about the normal kind of unprepared-ness that most high school students have, dealing with more responsibility and independence and more homework and less structured time that everyone deals with. But there's so much extra that a student with a disability has to deal with as far as the differences in the accommodations between high-school and college. And how do they request the services that they need?

I did a whole show on this earlier on, it may have been show number two, if you want to go back and listen to that earlier show. You had to forgive the sound quality and how nervous and stiff I sounded because, well, I was just starting out and I didn't know what I was doing and I was very very nervous. I think I may have even scripted that show, I was so nervous about what I was going to say. So obviously I don't do that anymore, but there is some good information there if you want to go back and listen to it. Maybe one of these days I'll do another transition show that's a little updated.

But anyways, check out this HEATH Resource Center Toolkit, I will have the link on the website because it's kind of long. The document itself is kind of long; it's 192 pages so it's something that you might want to just save on your computer as opposed to printing out.

I also want to let you know that a training that's coming up. It's the American with Disability Act National Transportation Training, and that'll be July 11th through 13th, 2006 at Harris Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. So if you work in transportation or a consumer advocate, anyone that's involved with public transportation and disability should probably want to look into attending this. It's three days and it's only a $100, which is very affordable for a conference, and you can find out more about that at the Disability Law Resource Project website, and again it's a rather long URL, I will have information on our show notes as well.

Today's show is directly influenced by the Tuning in AT [sp] podcast that put out by George Purrero [sp]. I've talked about this podcast before, but it's been a little while and I have to admit that I've fallen behind a little bit in listening to his shows, and just recently got caught up. George works as adaptive technologist in Canada, and as a podcast on adaptive technology called Tuning in AT [sp]. George's show is such a compliment to my mine because I'm in the United States, my show has a bit of a United States twist, although I hope some of the information I talk about is of interest to people outside The States. George has that Canadian viewpoint. Also, George is a Mac user and talks about things that are available for Macs. I'm a PC user; my products tend to be more focused on the PC.

Now, from I what I can tell from listening to his podcast, George's job consists of helping students with disabilities at the college where he works. Determine what technology whether it's hardware or software is going to help them overcome some of the difficulties cause by their disability. And one of the things that he tries to do is to find products and software that are either free or quite affordable, because not everyone qualifies for, I believe he calls it "a bursary", that's money available to students from the government to help them get what they need because of their disability. Now everyone qualifies for that or for whatever other reason they may not be able to afford the higher in software or hardware products.

So that inspired me to come up with this series for the Disability 411 podcast, where I'm going to be looking for... I'm looking really at software, inexpensive alternatives to some of the higher-end products that are available. You've heard me talk before about things like Kurzweil or JAWS, and those are fantastic products. And if you have their resources and the opportunity to buy those, I recommend it. But they are not cheap.

For example, my college, we provide that software in our computer labs so that student with disabilities can come in use those computers and have the technology that they need in order to use the computer. But we're not able to provide them software to use at home. Now if they're working with vocational rehabilitation there's a possibility that, via our counselor, we'll get that for them. But not always, and not everyone qualifies for VR.

So what I'm going to try to do is find some software packages that provides some of the same functionality that you can either use at home or maybe you don't have the need for all the options that these other software packages have. I will say up front you pretty much get what you pay for. The free products that I have found just really don't compare with the more expensive products. But again, if you don't have the funds or you don't need all the bells and whistles, then some of these might work really well for you. Or maybe you use them to get started and then decide that you want the higher end functions or maybe you're on a friend's computer and you need to have access to something and it's just a one-time thing, or whatever, there's a lot of reason why this might be helpful.

So George, if you're listening, this show is dedicated to you. And I will have a link to the Tuning In AT podcast on our show notes, but the website is very simple, it's simply tuninginAT.com.

Today we will be looking at text-to-speech, and these are software packages that will take text from your computer and read out loud to you. Now on the high-end of things there are products like JAWS and Window-Eyes, which are screen readers, and those are intended for students who have no usable vision, you can be completely blind and run your computer with these software packages.

Text-to-speech is also used in other packages such as Kurzweil, or WYNN, which is more for students who have learning disabilities, because it will display the text on the screen at the same time when it's reading it out loud. So packages that I'm going to look at today, some would be more for the vision and some would be more for learning disabilities, but what they all have in common is the fact that the computer is reading something out loud to you.

First I'm going to talk about the text to speech abilities that are built in to Windows XP. If you have Windows XP you actually have a number of accessibility features in there that you probably don't even know about. Microsoft has made an effort to include some accessibility features into its operating system, but there are two problems. One, nobody knows about them, so although they're there, they really haven't seem to have made much an effort to advertise them or really let anybody know about them. The other drawback is they are pretty basic, so it's almost like a teaser. They do just enough to make you realize you want something more.

The text-to-speech ability within XP is called Narrator, and Narrator will work with Notepad, WordPad, Control Panel programs, Internet Explorer and the Desktop. It works with some parts of the setup, but it's not guaranteed to work with any other programs. It will read to you what is in the active window, in the menu options or any text that you type in.

So rather than talk you through how to set this up and how to use it, I'm just going to put the link on the show notes. It's really pretty simple, and in fact, I'm going to put where you can find the instructions for all of the accessibility option that are within XP. A lot of people may not know about these, and Microsoft doesn't be going out of their way to let anybody know about them, but I'm going to make sure that my Disability 411 listeners know about them, so check out the website to find out more about the XP accessibility features. Now, on to the software that I found. One of the software packages that I found is called ReadPlease, and you can find them at www.readplease.com, and they actually have three software packages that you can get.

The first one is free, it's called one ReadPlease 2003, and it's a nice general sort of text-to-speech. With this program you do have to cut and paste the text that you want to have read into the box within the ReadPlease program. So I would recommend this more for someone that had a learning disability or someone who has low vision, but still enough vision to be able to see what it is they want to cut and paste. Also, with these free and inexpensive software packages, in general, the voices are not going to be as good what you find with the higher-end packages.

In the ReadPlease 2003 version which is the free one, it only works with the Microsoft voices, which are kind of computerized and kind of robotic sounding, but if you buy either the ReadPlease Plus 2003 or the ReadingBar. Then you're able to import the AT&T Natural Voices which I think of the best voices out there. I could listen to those for a long time and it wouldn't get on my nerves. So that with the free version, it has to do with the licensing with AT&T won't let voices be distributed for free, so they have to be included with a purchased product. So if you upgrade to the ReadPlease Plus version, it's only $49.95. Your switch is so very inexpensive, and it allows you the additional functions of being able to use the AT&T voices, it has controls like fast-forward and rewind, things like that. You can add in customized pronunciation of the reader, consistently mispronouncing, you can go and fix it. It has some options for low-vision and some other addition features which might make it worth the $50 to purchase that.

Now the ReadingBar is another software package. It has a lot of the same functions of the ReadPlease Plus, but one thing that the ReadingBar does in addition is allow you to save the text as an MP3 or a WAV file. So let's say you're reading a chapter from a book for class or you're reading a newspaper article or magazine article that you know you're going to listen to again, then what this does is it will save the reading of the text as an audio file that you can then go back and listen on your MP3 player. So I think that's a really useful feature. Especially if you're a student and you're using this to read a text book or something that you're doing research on, and you're going to go back and listen to that again, but maybe want to have to be at your computer when you're listening to it. So if you buy the ReadingBar, the price on that is $69.95, which again is very inexpensive compared to some of the other software packages. But again, this sort of has drawback of you have to cut and paste the text into the box. But at their price it's probably worth the hassle. So that's ReadPlease at www.readplease.com.

The next package I want to talk about is a program called Sayz Me. This is a free text-to-speech reader for windows. Again, you have to copy and paste the text into the window or can type directly into the window and it will read it. It highlights words as it reads them, something somewhat to how Kurzweil does. So I you're reading and listening at the same time you can follow along easier. It's completely free, you even have permission and edit and modify the program yourself if you have that programming knowledge. And this one will also allow you to purchase the AT&T voices and use them within the software package. But the voice that come with it, again, are sort of computerized robotic voices.

Honestly, I found Sayz Me to be a little easier to use without having spending a lot of time looking at documentations and actually reading the instructions. I downloaded these two software packages just to give them a tryout. I found Sayz Me a littler easier to use, but I think it may not have all of the features that ReadPlease does. For example, Sayz Me doesn't appear to have the ability to save the output into an MP3 file, but considering it's free, you can download both of these and give them a try and see which one you like better.

Now the next package I want to talk about is one that I have not tried yet. I just found it right before I started recording this show, I haven't had a chance to download it and test it out. But it looks very promising. It's called Natural Reader.

Now, Natural Reader is a, again, it is a text-to-speech program, but this one doesn't require you to cut and paste into its window. This one will let you read directly from MS Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and there was one more, Adobe PDFs. So you can read those without having to do the cut and paste which is kind of nice. So if it works as advertised, I hadn't had a chance to play with this one. This one also has three versions. There's a free version, there's a professional version which is US$39.50, and the enterprise version which is $69.50. So the prices are kind of comparable to the ReadPlease.

Now the free version does only work with the Microsoft Mary voice, but if you have the professional or the enterprise version you are able to use the AT&T voices. With the professional and enterprise version you are able to export the file into an MP3 or a WAV file, and while you can read directly from the software packages that I mentioned, Word, Adobe PDFs, and so forth, with the free version, if you buy the professional or enterprise version, you're able to put in a toolbar at the top of those... at the toolbars at the packages that will just make it a little bit easier. Also, if you have the enterprise version, it allows you to do a lot of editing with the sound files. So the professional version you can save as a sound file, but the enterprise version allow you to do a lot of the editing, you can take several small files and put them together into one, you can convert from MP3 to WAV or vice versa, you can have it be recording a whole bunch of files at the same time.

Lets say you have several short stories, and you might have them all saved as MP3s, you could tell them to do all at once and walk away and come back later. So, again, I have not had a chance to play with this, but it looks very promising, and maybe a little easier than the cut and paste. But again, download it, give it a try, see which one works for your needs, and again, I'm still thinking more for learning disabilities than total blindness. Or learning disabilities with low vision as opposed of no usable vision on this package.

Now the last thing I wanted to talk about as far as text to speech is actually an extension that is added in to the FireFox browser. Now, if you use FireFox, you're probably pretty familiar with the extensions. Firstly I think it one of the most fun parts of having FireFox for you browser is that it allows you to add in these little add-ons that people write and share. They do all kinds of interesting things. Some of them are just pure fun, and some of them are incredibly useful for activity types of tools, and some of them have to do with accessibility. One of the newer ones is called FireVox, and it's basically a screen reader for the FireFox browser that will read what pages and, again, it doesn't have the high-end voices, but you don't have to download anything special, except to have the FireFox browser with this extension plugged-in. So even if you were at someone else's house, using their computer and it's someone else's computer, it would be pretty easy to download this and install that extension within just a few minutes and you'd be able to surf the web on that computer. So I will have the link for that in our show notes. You do have to look at the website within the FireFox browser, but personally [I use] FireFox anyway. That is pretty much what I'm going to talk about today.

In future shows I'll be talking about other kinds of free and low-cost software that's out there. If you know of any that you like, whether it is another text-to-speech, because I know there's lots out there that I did not talk about. If you have one that you like of if you have another free or low-cost software package for disabilities that you like, send it my way. Let's try to keep it under US$100. So if you know one that you like and use them and would like me to share, please send it to me at disability411@jinkle.com so I can look into it and share it with our audience.

As always, visit our website in order to see all of the links for all of the places I talked about in today's show. To read a transcript of today's show, to listen to past show or read their transcripts. Don't forget to drop by and visit out Frappr Maps, take a pin in for where you live so I can see where you all are at. Send me an email at disability411@jinkle.com. Let me know any feedback on the shows, what your favorite show was, anything that I can throw in the 25th show retrospect. And that'll wrap it up for now. I'll talk to you all next time. This has been Disability 411, the podcast for disability professionals, and I'm your host Beth Case.

The Disability 411 podcast is licensed under a under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives License and is brought to you by Jinkle.com with the cooperation of AHEAD in Texas, ATHEN; DLRP, a project of ILRU, a program of TIRR and the PEC Texas SOTAC. To learn what any of this means, please visit our web site at disability411.jinkle.com. Music by the Brobdingnagian Bards is used with permission.

(Transcribed by www.castingwords.com)