Showing posts with label Text to Speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Text to Speech. Show all posts
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
Dyslexia: Merilee Grage Hearing the Voices of Dragon
She is using Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking to help finish her Master’s degree in Special Education.
She is a believer in the use of assistive tech in the classroom, and has introduced Dragon to the students in her repsonibility, who face reading challenges.
She reports that the results have been “amazing.”
Grage dropped out of college in 1979 due to her undiagnosed dyslexia, but with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the tables have turned: "I bought Dragon to help with my typing and I ended up using it for everything: emails, papers, my online courses, and anything else that requires a keyboard."
"It’s about creativity and having a flow of work that’s not interrupted by worrying about spelling and grammar. Dragon is a major part of that."
More recently, Merilee has seen the transformation Dragon has had on students of all ages, including a 3rd grader with dyslexia who, for the first time, was excited about reading and was thirsty for more.
“When we were done,” Grage recalls he said, "There has to be a third book." His motivation was amazing.
This was a student who didn’t want to go to the resource room because he read at a first grade level and couldn’t write complete sentences.
"Dragon and echo reading during profile creation forced him to work on word pronunciation, and his comprehension and fluency greatly increased."
To read more of Merilee’s story, go to Nuance's website here.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Dyslexia: SoundGecko App Converts Text to MP3
We tried it out on the test article and it was clear and fairly realistic in it's speech pattern.
We would be interested to hear from anyone who has experience of this app.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
BrailleTouch App: Helps blind to send text messages
Researchers at Georgia Tech produced the app - to be made available on Apple and Android devices - based on the Braille writing system.
It is claimed typing with the app is up to six times faster than existing methods for texting without sight.
Access to technology for the visually-impaired is a growing issue due to the proliferation of touchscreens.
Experts say currently available tools, such as Apple's Voiceover technology, are functional but too slow to be used effectively.
Brailletouch, which the team hope to release in the next couple of weeks, uses a system that is controlled with six fingers and, crucially, does not require any movement of the hands.
"Users who know how to type Braille well never move their hands," explained Mario Romero, lead researcher on the project.
"When users hold the phone they hold the phone with the screen facing away from them in landscape mode.
"They wrap the index, middle and ring finger in each hand around the phone.
"It's not like the Qwerty keyboard where you move up and down. That's why this thing works - we can get away with only six keys."
"This is not for texting and driving” Mario Romero Lead researcher
Eyes-free kit
"Learning to type Braille is learning to memorise where the the dots fall," Mr Romero said.
"It took me and my colleagues a few hours to memorise things so we could start typing at around 10 words per minute. It's not something that takes years.
"We're hoping that, if not Braille, a similar system may solve the issue of having too many keys that are too small that force everybody to look at the screen when they're typing."
However, Mr Romero was quick to dampen any possible hopes that the software could be used to text while behind the wheel.
"They need to concentrate on what they're doing. This is not for texting and driving," he said.
'Truly blind'
Mr Romero highlighted a growing anxiety shared among the blind community that the widespread adoption of touchscreens for many machines and devices is making them "truly blind".
"There is extreme concern about this new trend.
"A lot of equipment today - from copying machines to machines at the gym - is all coming with touch screens."
He added that while research into tactile screens, which give users feedback by moulding, is taking place, we are still some way from having touchscreens which adequately cater for the visually-impaired.
"Blind people say I 'see' things with my fingers," Mr Romero said.
"But on touchscreens they are truly blind."
It is claimed typing with the app is up to six times faster than existing methods for texting without sight.
Access to technology for the visually-impaired is a growing issue due to the proliferation of touchscreens.
Experts say currently available tools, such as Apple's Voiceover technology, are functional but too slow to be used effectively.
Brailletouch, which the team hope to release in the next couple of weeks, uses a system that is controlled with six fingers and, crucially, does not require any movement of the hands.
"Users who know how to type Braille well never move their hands," explained Mario Romero, lead researcher on the project.
"When users hold the phone they hold the phone with the screen facing away from them in landscape mode.
"They wrap the index, middle and ring finger in each hand around the phone.
"It's not like the Qwerty keyboard where you move up and down. That's why this thing works - we can get away with only six keys."
"This is not for texting and driving” Mario Romero Lead researcher
Eyes-free kit
Brailletouch will be free and open-source, its makers say, and it is hoped it could even become an "eyes-free" solution for fully-sighted people who want to text while visually pre-occupied with something else.
"Learning to type Braille is learning to memorise where the the dots fall," Mr Romero said.
"It took me and my colleagues a few hours to memorise things so we could start typing at around 10 words per minute. It's not something that takes years.
"We're hoping that, if not Braille, a similar system may solve the issue of having too many keys that are too small that force everybody to look at the screen when they're typing."
However, Mr Romero was quick to dampen any possible hopes that the software could be used to text while behind the wheel.
"They need to concentrate on what they're doing. This is not for texting and driving," he said.
'Truly blind'
Mr Romero highlighted a growing anxiety shared among the blind community that the widespread adoption of touchscreens for many machines and devices is making them "truly blind".
"There is extreme concern about this new trend.
"A lot of equipment today - from copying machines to machines at the gym - is all coming with touch screens."
He added that while research into tactile screens, which give users feedback by moulding, is taking place, we are still some way from having touchscreens which adequately cater for the visually-impaired.
"Blind people say I 'see' things with my fingers," Mr Romero said.
"But on touchscreens they are truly blind."
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Ginger Software - Text to Speech Online
Download link here
This blog does not endorse this product in any way, it is simply provided as a news item for your information.
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