An exciting Technology available in the AV machines is Text-to-speech.
Text-to-speech lets text in applications be "spoken" by the computer. Solutions for this technology include proof reading without the user focusing on the computer and storage of many hours of "voice" (text takes up 1,000 times less space than even the lowest quality digitized speech).
The version of TeachText (7.2) on the hard drive of the Quadra 840 AV and 660 AV and the Centris 660 AV supports the PlainTalk Text-to-Speech feature. Other applications may not yet support this feature, but are expected to add it in the future where it may be useful.
Speech Recognition, or, the ability of the computer to respond to spoken commands, does not need to be active, however the PlainTalk Software, which includes the voices, must be installed for this to work.
The Speech Manager
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The Speech Manager lets users switch voices within applications. Any selected text can be spoken back by selecting the appropriate command from the Edit menu and users can direct an appropriately designed application to change between voices in a body of text to create a dialog effect.
Steps to Follow
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Follow these steps to convert text to speech (these steps use an example Read Me file):
STEP ACTION
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1 Launch TeachText 7.2 and notice the Voices sub-menu
under the File menu. This lets you change voices
between spoken selections without having to open the
Speech Setup Control Panel (the default voice is
Female Voice, Compressed).
2 Close the untitled window.
3 Open the Read Me document from the File menu.
4 If no text is selected, you can issue the Speak
All menu command (Command-H) and the entire text is read
back. If you select a portion of text, the menu changes
to say Speak Selection and just that is read back. Even
though some ReadMe files are not editable (so users
don't change them) and therefore do not let portions of
text be selected, TeachText lets the user select Speak
All and have the contents of the ReadMe spoken back.
To stop speech in the middle of speaking back, select
Stop Speaking from the File menu.
If your applications do not have an option for Text-to-speech, you may want to check with the application developer about plans to integrate Text-to-speech into the application.
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