Not, unfortunately, an adequate answer when we are trying to produce
documents (our web site for example) that can be read cleanly by
**anybody's** screen reader, not just our own.
The Text to Speech synthesis software library producers (Scansoft/Nuance
et al) have made a lot of progress in the quality of the **sound** of
the speech, but seem to have put less emphasis, and so are lagging
behind in rendering intelligently and correctly such things as dates,
abbreviations, homographs (read/read, lead/lead), punctuation
idiosyncrasies etc, such as Jean quotes.
To some extent this could be compensated by the screen reader publishers
(Dolphin, Texthelp etc) supplying much larger exception dictionaries as
standard and as appropriate for the different TTS engines.
It occurs to me that we could perform a useful service as a community
focus point here, by acting as a central download point for more
comprehensive pronunciation exception dictionaries. If you have a
pronunciation exception dictionary that you are particularly proud of
(or know a student who has) because you have worked on it for some time
then please email it to me (PERSONALLY to [log in to unmask], NOT by
replying to the list please!). Please also in the covering email give as
much information as possible about the software, TTS voice, and version
information that it is for use with. Depending on the response, we will
then make it available as a free download. We may also put some work
into amalgamating and editing lists to improve them, give information
about installing them etc, if it looks like that would be useful.
And I'd also be grateful for comments if this is a good or silly idea!
Ian Litterick
Executive Chairman
www.iansyst.co.uk
www.dyslexic.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cate Knight
Sent: 24 August 2006 11:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [DIS-FORUM] Publications in audio format
Dolphin Producer has a field in the Audio tab where you can alter the
lexicons for different synthesisers. You can in effect train the
synthesiser to pronounce things as you would wish them to be pronounced.
You can transfer lexicons from one synthesiser to another and allocate
specific rules to specific synths. I hope that this helps? If you need
clear instructions then let me know. I'm not the Producer expert but I
know a (wo)man who is! C x
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jean Hutchins
Sent: 24 August 2006 11:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Publications in audio format
Thank u for this information.
I am working on this with Ian Litterick and EA Draffan for the British
Dyslexia Association.
Has anyone written guidelines for
writing text for text-reading software?
The various text-readers and voices all have different 'funnies', i.e.
words and abbreviations spoken oddly.
The same voice even varies in different applications, but there must be
general principles.
We do not want, for instance,
"eg" saying "egg",
How about this, for starters?
>The golden rule, for print and for electronic versions, is to read
your document aloud. If you pause, mark this in the text with
punctuation. If you expand any abbreviations, do this in the document.
Put stops after headings and bullet points to make the voice pause. Put
stops in acronyms if you do not want them read as words, e.g. H.E.,
F.E., I.C.T., but SENCo is fine. It is even better to put the full words
every time.
Automated numbers are not read aloud by all text-readers. Hyphens are
not read aloud. So put "6 to 9 November" not "6-9 November". Slashes
are spoken, so try to avoid them. Tables cause problems for
text-readers.<
And above all, don't have an office in "Reading".
Jean
-----------------------------------------
Jean Hutchins, SE Surrey DA.
RSA Dip SpLD, AMBDA, retired.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
British Dyslexia Association Web: www.bdadyslexia.org (Also into
spelling reform www.spellingsociety.org)
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