‘Text-to-Speech’ Archives

In the latest episode of the MacCast, a popular mainstream podcast focusing on Apple products, host Adam Christianson invites Shelly Brisbin, Josh de Lioncourt, and Shane Jackson to discuss the new accessibility features of the iPhone 3GS. We’d like to thank Adam for his coverage of accessibility on the show, and highly recommend the MacCast [...]

Apple quietly updated the VoiceOver Kit for the iPod Shuffle 3G to version 1.0.1 today. The download, which is currently oly available through the software update mechanism and not Apple’s web site, is 17MB and includes corrected pronunciation definitions for certain popular artists’ names and other unspecified bug fixes. The iPod Shuffle 3G employs VoiceOver [...]

The Mac-cessibility Podcast has been reborn as a round table discussion show, dealing with all things related to accessibility of Apple products. The show is planned to have a new episode once a month, starting with this week’s episode entitled "Reboot". Topics covered: Introduce this month’s panelists, including Holly Anderson, Darcy Burnard, Cara Quinn, Steve [...]

Little by little, we find these individual steps toward accessibility of Apple’s iPhone for the blind and visually impaired. This time, it comes in the form of an iPhone application called Talking Email Keyboard for iPhone from G.P. Imports. The software announces each key you type on the iPhone in a clear and understandable voice, [...]

Yesterday, in a brief post on Amazon’s Kindle Blog, the Kindle development team notes that they’ve received a great deal of feedback from visually impaired readers, and that they are working to make the Kindle more accessible in the future. Specifically, the post mentions adding speech feedback to the navigation system of the device. While [...]

We’ve published a new editorial piece on the new third-generation iPod Shuffle, its VoiceOver implementation, and what all this could potentially mean for the future of other Apple products. You can read the editorial here.

We thought our readers would like to hear samples of the new iPod Shuffle speaking in the various supported languages. On this Apple.com iPod Shuffle with VoiceOver page you can do just that. We are extremely impressed with the quality of the voices and are hopeful that Apple will include multi-lingual text-to-speech features in the [...]

We were able to confirm with APple that the new iPod Shuffle with the VoiceOver feature does not require third-party voices to make use of the fourteen different languages. The process used to generate the speech is different, though we do not have specifics on what the new process is. Apple confirms, however, that no [...]

Today, Apple Inc. introduced the all-new iPod shuffle, the world’s smallest music player at nearly half of the size of the previous model. The new Shuffle includes text-to-speech capabilities, making it the first music player with speaking features aimed at the general public. The new VoiceOver feature enables iPod shuffle to speak your song titles, [...]

While not strictly Mac related, we feel that this situation is a serious problem, and could potentially effect access to printed materials and mobile devices for the blind and visually impaired at large. The Author’s Guild has taken issue with the new text-to-speech capabilities of the Kindle device from Amazon.com

The Washington University’s Accessibility Interaction and MObility Group (AIM Group) has demonstrated a technique for how the Apple iPhone could be made accessible to users who are blind or visually impaired. You can see a remarkable video demonstrating this technique by clicking the YouTube.com link. This is a very exciting advancement that shows the possibilities. [...]

Assistiveware has posted a pair of videos on the popular video sharing site YouTube.com demonstrating the iPod Nano 4G’s talking menu capabilities using both their French and British text-to-speech voices, available as part of their InfoVox iVox product for Mac OS X. This is a great way to see how the speaking menu feature works, [...]