Hello All! I'd like to propose a new Ubuntu Accessibility project aimed at creating Text To Speech voices (or helping to improve existing ones).
Project wiki page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Projects/Voices The project is especially focused on creating and improving eSpeak voices, which we need for the multilingual Live CDs and which are relatively easy to create. The eSpeak maintainer says that he is happy to create new basic language sets, but needs help from native speakers to improve them and actually make them usable. Most of this work does not involve programming or audio mixing, but merely altering language definition files. So if you speak one of the languages listed in the wiki, please test the quality of the voice and give some feedback on what might be improved. As we go we can help each other figure out the workings of the eSpeak language definition files. This project is important for several reasons: - First of all we should strive to provide local language support in spoken form to as many people as possible. Universal Access is both about infrastructure and tools as well as language. - The live CD currently ships with some of worlds most spoken languages by default in the form of localised desktop and application interfaces. It would be great if we had the corresponding voices available as well. - This represents a fairly simple non-coding way of contributing to Ubuntu Accessibility So if you can spare some time but don't do programming this is a great way to contribute! - Local promotion -- It would be much easier to promote Ubuntu and Free Software to local visual impairment communities if we had native speech support. In places where commercial offerings are poor it's a killer feature! If we can make a basic start on this within the ubuntu accessibility team I'd like to invite other groups to help out such as the Ubuntu Studio team or the good folks over at LibriVox.org Henrik -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
