There is some really bad text to speech out there and the upshot will be that people will abandon whatever it is using a bad voice synthesiser. You get it on news clips, how to clips, automated phone messages. It is awful. Digital voices are as unique as human voices so I am not sure why they seem to pick the most annoying and horrible ones for public consumption. There are some reasonable voices out there and they are improving all the time. Text to speech does have its uses especially in terms of accessibility , literacy and mastering a new language. The video clip gives you some ideas as to how to manage text to speech effectively and this clip on another text to speech option shows you too how effective it can be. The tip from both clips is to try the different options to get the best one for your purposes.
Filed under: classroom, e-learning, resources, software, technology | Tagged: accesibility, articicial speech, language learning, literacy, technology, text to speech, voice overs, voice synthesisers | Leave a comment »