WordTalk is another plug-in for Microsoft Word, and it's available free from Call Scotland at the University of Edinburgh. Otherwise, you can play back the MP3 file using any MP3 player. There's a range of programs to handle DAISY files including DaisyWorm for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, and Go Read for Android. It makes audio files much easier to navigate. It was developed in Sweden in the early 1990s and adopted by America's National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. This will save your RTF (Rich Text Format) or other document as an XML ebook and a synchronised MP3 audio file created using Microsoft's TTS software and the LAME encoding engine.ĭAISY is the world standard for digital talking books, the name being derived from Digital Accessible Information System. This lets you select 'Save as DAISY' from the Word menu and then 'Full DAISY'. If you have Microsoft Office, try the open source Microsoft Word add-in Save as DAISY, which works with Word 2003, 20. There are also lots of separate programs that either use Microsoft's SAPI (speech application programming interface) and Speech Platform software or bring their own TTS system. In Microsoft Office 20, Speak is built into Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote. (The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A did it before then, but only with its optional plug-in speech synthesiser module.)Īs you appreciate, TTS is also part of Microsoft Windows, where it is currently used by Narrator to provide screen-reading facilities for people with impaired vision. TTS then became common in computers during the next decade, starting with the Atari 1400XL home micro in 1983. Text-to-speech (TTS) is easy to do at a simple level, and Texas Instruments started making speech synthesis chips – as used in its Speak & Spell toy – in the late 1970s. Is there is a safe free download that will convert the Open University info I receive in RTF so that I can listen to it as I work outside? I have text to speech on my HP Pavilion laptop but (a) I am unable to slow it down enough for textbook type information as opposed to detective stories etc, and (b) it isn't practical to walk around behind a lawnmower carrying a laptop.

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