[bksvol-discuss] Re: Auditory Processing Disorder and Reading Accessibility
- From: "Monica Willyard" <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:52:29 -0500
Hi Kim. Actually, there have been some amazing strides in the development of
SAPI 5 voices. Some of them are quite good, almost human. You might be
surprised. I suspect that what you have heard are the old Microsoft voices
like Sam, Mary, and Mike. Those voices are pretty awful. The newer voices
can be adjusted with rate, pitch, and inflection to sound more lifelike. In
fact, if you spend a few minutes putting some words into your JAWS or
Kurzweil dictionary, you can almost forget that it's a computer talking to
you. My voices are clear enough now that my aunt, who hasn't lived around
computer speech until this year, can understand it clearly.
That's why Bookshare gives us some free voices. They didn't skimp either.
They give us high-quality voices that make reading comfortable. I am
impressed by this, and it's something Bookshare hasn't really promoted here
on this list. I don't particularly like the VictorSoft reading program
Bookshare uses. However, I use it because of the voice when I need to learn
something. That's saying something because I was a die-hard Kurzweil reader
for years. I still use it for pleasure. When I need to concentrate and
retain something though, I switch to the Bookshare software and am glad to
have it.
Monica Willyard
"The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Peter Drucker
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