One of my first tasks ED 661 was to look into text-to-speech applications that are available online. I was interested in evaluating the usefulness of the tools for teaching reading.
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zeta imTranslator
ImTranslator is by far the best free online web based
text reader that I have found. You will
need to register for access to the site, but that will only cost you an e-mail
address which is used for validation. The
web-app reads text and highlights as it goes. It will also translate between
50 different languages. There are
translation dictionaries, a spell checker, a virtual keyboard, a text decoder,
and an e-mailer. It lacks a talking
head (avatar) and the ability to change the accent of the voice.
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Read The Words
This demonstration of Read The Words is a simple text-to-speech application with avatars that speak in English, Spanish, and French using a variety of male or female voices. It lacks the ability to accent the voices or to change the speed of the reading. There is an option to create an MP3 file. The voice is a bit too robotic for my taste.
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NaturalReader
This is a free download application for either the Window OS or the Mac OS. It highlights the words as it reads, comes with multiple voices, and allows the speed of the read back to be adjusted. It also has a floating bar that allows you to have the text in other applications read.
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Paralink Text-to-Speech
This site is a portal to components of the imTranslator application that allows for the use of those components without registering with the site. It includes translator, dictionary, and text-to-speech tabs. It highlights the text as it reads and includes an avatar.
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oddcast
The oddcast text-to-speech web-app has a deceptively simple interface that proves to be quite powerfull for text reading. It has by far the best avatar that includes a wide variety of voice accents. While it does not include a translator, if you past in text from other languages the application will read them. You will also have the option to add effects: pitch, speed, duration, echo, reverb, flanger, phase, bullhorn, and whisper.
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iSpeech
This site is an iSpeech demo that while extremly limited has by far the best voices that I have come across thus far.
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ivona
A demo site for ivona that allows simple cut n' past read back. The voices and accents are quite good, but limited to the European languages.
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AT&T Natural Voices
A very rudimentary cut n' paste
text-to-speech reader that has multiple voices and allows file download. I
don't like that it launches Media Player each time it plays the audio. The
voices are not of the quality that I would have expected.
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