Text-to-speech (TTS)

About this course

What is text-to-speech?

WordTalk

Balbolka

Read Out Loud

Exercise 1

Compairing text-to-speech tools

Summary

Answers to exercises (no cheating!)

 

About this course

This self-study course has been developed by Load2Learn, a service providing accessible curriculum textbooks and images to support dyslexic, partially sighted or blind learners who have difficulty reading standard print.

It is part of the “Creating and using accessible curriculum resources self-study course” available on Load2Learn. Licenced under Creative Commons.

What is text-to-speech?

Text-to-speech (TTS) is a sythentic speech application used to create a spoken audio version of the text displayed on your computer, such as a Word document, PDF or webpage.

So if you have difficulty accessing the text, using software that converts that text into speech is a really valuable tool.

In this Unit we are going to focus on some Text-to-speech (TTS) software that you can access and use with your learners.

WordTalk

WordTalk is freely available add-in to Microsoft Word. It provides a toolbar which will sit on your menu bar in Word and gives you the ability to have text read back to you.

The WordTalk video will show you how it works as well as showing you what it is like to listen to. It will use the default Microsoft synthetic voice called Microsoft Anna.

The video will also show you that not all software and voice combinations are able to cope with the demands of the document. Different software and voices can deal with the pronunciation of various words in very different ways.

Activity 1

Watch the on YouTube.

Downloading WordTalk

WordTalk is available for free download from the WordTalk website.

Important: you will need to download the version of WordTalk that is compatible with your version of Microsoft Word.

Balbolka

Balbolka uses voices that are already installed on your computer and makes them available to the software so it can read out the text displayed on the screen. Balbolka also allows you to save files as MP3 or MP4 and other formats.

The programme has the ability to view texts from Word documents, EPUB, HTML and PDF as well as some other files types.

Users can choose to customise the font colour, font size, the background colour and control the reading in terms of pace, pitch and volume.

Activity 2

Wath the video “” on YouTbue. This video demonstrates the functions of the ‘My Study Bar’ which is a suite of open source and freeware applications to support learners with literacy difficulties.

Activity 3

Watch the video “” on YouTube. This tutorial explains the range of features for text to speech and how to save a text to MP3 using bookmarks.

Read Out Loud

Read Out Loud is a feature built into Adobe Reader which enables to PDF to be read aloud.

Activity 4

Watch the video “” on YouTube for an overview and also to find out about the shortcuts that are available.

Exercise 1

Question 1

For you computer to convert text to synthetic speech, which of the following do you need?

• Specialised text-to-speech conversion software.
• Synthetic voices for your computer.
• Synthetic voices and the appropriate software to make use of them.

Question 2

Which of these software packages do NOT provide text-to-speech functionality?

• Microsoft Word
• Balbolka
• Adobe PDF Reader

Question 3

How can you get a synthetic voice for your computer?

• Your must purchase a commercial voice.
• You can only use built-in voices that come with Windows or MacOS.
• You can use the built-in voices or purchase higher quality voices.

Comparing text-to-speech tools

Software is improving all the time, many now have regional accents to suit the individual. However, text-to-speech has had difficulty with some aspects of text including:

• direct speech
• bullet points/ lists
• sometimes pronouncing names correctly

There are many voices available and it's important to select a voice that meets your learners needs.

Activity 5

We have selected two companies that offer voices for text-to-speech software IVONA and Cereproc.

Listen to examples from both and consider the following:

• Compare some of the available voices.
• See which has difficulty with different types of text.
• Who is your favourite?
• Try some of the voices out with some of your learners or a colleague to find out what they think and if their preferred voice is the same as yours.
• What voice do you think the learners in the case studies would prefer?

Summary

Voices have developed greatly over the recent years however they still have a way to go before they sound just like a human’s voice. Be aware that when introducing text-to-speech to a learner it is important to be aware of this and that it may take some time before the learner can ‘tune in’ to the voice and focus on the content being read aloud.

Individuals listening to text-to-speech may want to change the pitch, speed and even the voice to be more comfortable using this technology.

Answers to exercises

Question 1 answer

For you computer to convert text to synthetic speech, which of the following do you need?

• Synthetic voices and the appropriate software to make use of them.

Question 2 answer

Which of these software packages do NOT provide text-to-speech functionality?

• Microsoft Word

Question 3 answer

How can you get a synthetic voice for your computer?

• You can use the built-in voices or purchase higher quality voices.

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