Hi Marie,
The Mac voices are more expensive than the extra voices for the iPhone/
iPad because the iPhone/iPad voices are only being used for text to
speech. What makes it expensive to get a good voice that will work
with a Screen Reader is the extra configurability that will let this
operate in absolutely every system application and in all
environments. When I use an Infovox voice on my Mac, I can do all
sorts of spell checking, position marking in reading books and
documention, edit the pronunciation tables, etc. The difference
between using one of the Infovox voices and a less expensive voice
from Cepstral, for example, is that my VoiceOver won't crash when I
use all these functions. In fact, Assistiveware does sell cheaper
versions of its voices as "convenienceware" text to speech in the form
of its GhostReader product. List price for GhostReader for one
country is $39.99, I think. GhostReader uses compressed versions of
the InfoVox voices and only uses them for text to speech for Web
browsing, email and reading documents. It's not designed for the
visually impaired, but at only $10 more when you buy an Infovox voice
in a bundle, I think it's worth it. The question is, do you want to
use a voice just for text to speech without VoiceOver control? Also,
these voices are less expensive than you might think once you more
than one package. I think the French voices cost me $49.99. You can
also use them on multiple machines, or get a household license for
using them. Even GhostReader has multi-language bundles that cost less.
I'm mostly interested in reading books and articles, but also in
different language translation. This is why I really want the
language rotor, because it's a pain to have to change the voice to
read in another language.
The way I'm using this app right now is through the SimpleNote
application. I can either type or paste directly into SimpleNote by
opening Notational Velocity on my desktop and pasting in there. (Both
SimpleNote and Notational Velocity are great, free products). Then, I
use the rotor to copy the documents and paste to Speak It! I think
that Read 2 Me, with current upload support from Google documents may
be worth looking at again. Before, the issues for Read 2 Me were
stability and the inability to adjust the voice rate, plus a really
clunky way of getting the documents loaded.
I'll repeat again that Speak It! also has other advantages for low
vision users, in being able to store the documents or notes in much
larger font sizes than they can use in other apps.
Just a few thoughts.
Cheers,
Esther
marie Howarth wrote:
Thanks for this information Ester.
I have two questions.
1. Why are the mac voices so expensive compared to the extra voices
on the IPhone/IPad?
2. Other than it being able to read books what else do you think
this app could be useful for?
On 20 Apr 2010, at 21:29, Esther wrote:
Hi All,
"Speak It!" is an app that lets you use the Acapela group's Infovox
voices on the iPhone or iPod Touch, and supposedly also for the
iPad, on text that you type or paste into the app, and create audio
files with these voices that you can either play back or mail.
This is absolutely great, because you can control the speed and
volume of the voices, and use voices that you may choose to
purchase for other languages. The basic app ($1.99) from Future
Apps, Inc. comes with Heather (U.S.), Graham (U.K.), Lucy (U.K.),
and Ryan (U.S.). You can buy additional voices through in-app
purchase for $0.99 each. I've just finished downloading Alice
(France) through the app (took about 10 minutes to download and
install). There's a text entry area (I copied and pasted what I
wanted into it instead of typing it in), and a picker wheel at the
bottom of the page to select the voice.
The screen when you start the app has two buttons at the top
("Settings" at the left and an unlabeled button for info at the
right), and three buttons at the bottom ("Speak It", "Actions", and
an unlabeled button for saved items created as a result of using
the "Actions" button). Below the top row of buttons is an area for
text entry following the label: "Enter text to say" where you can
either type in or paste in copied text. This is accessed in the
usual way by double tapping in the text area to bring up the
virtual keyboard. Below the text entry area and occupying the
bottom section third or so of the screen is picker wheel labeled
"Select Voice".
You'll likely want to double tap the "Settings" button at the top
left of the screen to adjust the voice rate before you start
speaking with the Speak It! voice. There are three settings options
to adjust: Text font size (for low vision folks), Voice volume, and
Voice rate. Each control has both a button and a slider. The
button doesn't do anything except update to a number you can read
off -- I think this is words per minute in the case of the rate.
When you make your adjustments flick left to get back from your
settings to the "Done button" on the right edge (not quite at the
top of the screen; maybe a fifth of the way down from the top of
the screen in the vertical screen extent if you touch it directly)
and double tap.
When you enter text, you have the option of either leaving the
virtual keyboard up, and double tapping the "Speak It!" button,
which has now moved up so it is just above the virtual keyboard and
below the text entry area, at the left side of the center of the
screen, or of first flicking right from the "Speak It!" button to
the "Done" button at the right side of the center of the screen,
and double tapping to dismiss the virtual keyboard.
The first mode is convenient when you want to review material and
continue to type in. When you've finished entering text, you'll
want to use the "Done" button to dismiss the virtual keyboard so
you can also gain access to the "Actions" button for saving items,
either as text or to create audio files, and to access the saved
items (via the unlabeled button to the right of the "Actions"
button) under either the list of "Saved Phrases" or the "Saved
Audio Files". Double tapping one of the "Saved Audio Files"
To have Speak It! read the text, double tap the "Speak It!" button
at the bottom left. Once you double tap that button, two buttons,
the left for "Play/Pause" and the right for "Stop", will appear in
the location of the "Speak It!" button. You have to move your
finger slightly to the left to double tap the "Play/Pause" button.
Double tapping the "Stop" button causes the "Play/Pause" button to
disappear, and for the area occupied by the "Play/Pause" button and
"Stop" button to be replaced with the "Speak It!" button.
As mentioned before there are two unlabeled buttons: one at the top
right and one at the bottom right corner for saved items. The
button at the top right, that you will use to purchase new in-app
voices, takes you to an Info screen where there is a Help button at
the top left that gives you information about trouble-shooting
issues with Speak It!, and where the first listed button is the
"Speak It! Store" button, which you can use to purchase additional
voices. (The also have buttons further down the list for their
other applications, but you probably don't want to leave the app to
find out about these or buy them when you're first setting up Speak
It!.) The additional Acapela group voices currently available for
this app are for (U.K. or U.S.) English, French (including a
Canadian French voice), German, Spanish (including an American
Spanish voice), and Italian.
Miscellaneous other comments: Just after downloading the Alice
French voice I found VoiceOver's behavior a bit sluggish. There are
various suggestions on their FAQ (reached from "Help" button via
the unlabeled button to the "Info" page) about possibly deleting
the app, shutting down and restarting the iPhone/iPod Touch, and
then downloading and installing updates for the app through iTunes
on your computer if this happens (you will not be charged again).
I didn't have to do any of this, but I did restart my iPod Touch.
There may be practical limits on the size and number of voice
recordings and saved phrase files you can keep. I haven't used the
app often enough to tell. I did notice that when I saved longer
files (130,000 words -- novella length) that sometime buttons would
simply click and not get announced when I navigated the control
pages quickly. I'd also guess that saving and emailing lengthy
audio files may also take up memory resources of the iPhone and
affect VoiceOver performance. The audio files are AIFF -- not
compressed, and the default format for Macs. They'll play in
Windows iTunes, and on your iPhone, but maybe not in other Windows
apps without conversion to a compressed format. They can also get
quite large, so do some judicious experimenting on small scales
before you get carried away. Low vision users will like the
ability to save these phrases in large font text. This app is also
supposed to be universal binary and work on the iPad, too. If you
have listened to the Infovox voices from the Assistiveware page and
downloaded the trial (for the Mac) at:
http://www.assistiveware.com/ivoxsamples.php
you'll probably have a much better feeling for what these voices
sound like, particularly speeded up, than trying out the same
voices at the in-app purchase store. Some list users will also
like the fact that male English voices are available. I typically
don't try to run these voices as fast as the regular voices for the
iPhone/iPod Touch. As Brett has mentioned previously, when you set
rates over 90 per cent for the English language voices, and you
don't use the default U.S. voice, you're likely to experience some
dropped bits of speech. This is not the only app that uses the
Infovox voices for text to speech. Anne recommended the "Read 2
Me" app ($4.99) by Retinal Media. I'll have to explore the latest
update, because they have recently added adjustable voice speed
(yay!) and Google Docs importing, along with larger file support,
and appears to be less buggy. But the "Speak It!" app has support
for other language voices.
FutureApps, the developer of Speak It!, also has translation apps
that use these voices. It's possible that some of the other
languages from their iSpeak series that are demoed on their web
site will also make it into Speak It! (e.g., Portuguese, Dutch,
Swedish, and Polish). Here's the FutureApps URL:
http://www.future-apps.net/
• Speak It! Text to Speech ($1.99) by FutureApps is available
internationally at the iTunes Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speak-it-text-to-speech/id308629295?mt=8
Comes with 4 U.S. and U.K. English Infovox voices. Additional
voices (currently in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish)
may be purchased for $0.99/each via in-app purchase. This app is
universal binary, and also works for the iPad.
• Read 2 Me ($4.99) by Retinal Media:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/read-2-me/id313752154?mt=8
English only Infovox voices, and also universal binary to work with
the iPad. New features of variable voice speed, Google Docs
importing, and more.
Cheers,
Esther
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