The issue with many free tools - Text to speech (like Orato, DSpeech, Balabolka) or screenreaders (like Thunder or NVDA) - is the quality of your default system voice.
In Scotland there are 2 free high quality voices available to FE and Schools but not HE. In England there will shortly be 2 free voices available to FE and Skills sector as well as HE as a result of BIS funding for JISC TechDis to develop high quality voices. These will initially be downloadable at institution level by staff in early March but phase 2 will boast an enhanced authentication system to allow individual learners to download for home use etc.
Alistair
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Dews
Sent: 01 February 2012 15:58
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: suitable screen readers for long texts
Hello
I'm a librarian at a postgraduate medical school and I'm interested in assistive technology but don't know much about it.
I was interested to discover the free resources available on the Eduapps website. I am curious to know what applications the Orato screen reader has. It's an ingenious piece of software but as far as I can see it wouldn't be suitable for reading whole articles out loud - the speech quality isn't good enough. So what is it good for?
And are their commercially available screen readers (JAWS?) where the speech quality is good enough to read long documents?
Thank you
Jonathan Dews
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