----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Pattison" <srp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Multiple recipients of NFBnet GUI-TALK Mailing List" <gui-talk at NFBnet.org> Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 6:45 AM Subject: Fwd: NYTimes.com: Hearing Text, Not Tunes, on Your MP3 Player > > > From: Catherine Alfieri calfieri at ROCHESTER.RR.COM > To: EASI at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU > > Resources for people who find reading difficult for different > reasons... > > Hearing Text, Not Tunes, on Your MP3 Player > > May 2, 2002 > > By DAVID POGUE > > TALKING computers are nothing new. Computers in sci-fi > movies have been chatting away for years (think HAL in > "2001"), the physicist Stephen Hawking uses a voice > synthesizer to communicate, and the occasional nerd still > thinks it's cute to record a computer-generated > answering-machine greeting. > > Otherwise, though, computer speech has been thoroughly > ignored by the average consumer - which seems odd, > considering that every Macintosh and Windows PC comes with > built-in software that reads back text. On the Mac, you can > choose from 18 computerized voices (every conceivable > variation of male, female and alien) to read back documents > in Word, AppleWorks, America Online and other programs. In > Windows, a utility program called Narrator can read aloud > menus and dialog boxes. > > A quick search at www.downloads.com, furthermore, unearths > dozens of free and shareware programs that mine the same > territory. Some are specialized programs designed to > pronounce each word as you type it, or to give voice to the > typed exchanges in your instant-message chats. Most, > though, are simply designed to read back text on the > screen. > > For most people, the question is: Why? Sure, listening to > documents read aloud sometimes helps you catch mistakes a > traditional proofreading pass might miss. Blind computer > users, children learning to read, and people learning > English may benefit, too. Then, too, text-reading programs > make it possible for you to "listen to articles on the Web > while fixing your lunch," as one software company > cheerfully puts it. Still, for mainstream consumers, these > aren't what you would call desperately needed functions. > > But the winds of change are blowing in the field known as > text-to-speech. New Windows programs with names like > iSpeak, TextAloudMP3 and Text-to-Audio do more than simply > read your text out loud: they can also turn it into the > high-quality compact sound recordings known as MP3 files. > > Teenagers ignited the MP3 craze by converting their > favorite pop-music CD's into MP3 files that play back on > portable music players. What makes these new speech > programs remarkable is that they open up the same kind of > freedom to the over-20 set. They let you listen to your > documents - e-mail, Web pages, reports, manuals, electronic > books, or anything else you can type or download - as you > commute, work out or work outside. > > Of course, commuters and joggers have been listening to > Books on Tape for years, and companies like Audible.com > create what you might call Books on MP3. These products are > expensive, however, and your listening is restricted to > other people's stuff. > > Using your PC to record your own material has a drawback, > though: you won't be listening to the voice of a > professional actor. (Listening to James Earl Jones read > your e-mail to you would certainly be a rush, but might be > out of your price range.) In fact, you won't even be > listening to a human being. When you listen to the old > Apple and Microsoft voices, "lifelike" isn't the adjective > that springs to mind. In charitable moments, you might > describe them as sounding like drunken Scandinavian robots. > Fortunately, a white knight has emerged to rescue you from > the prospect of listening to mechanical voices forever: > AT&T, which has developed a set of new, vastly improved > voices called Natural Voices. The inflection isn't always > on track - they sometimes produce nonsensical line > readings, as if an actor were auditioning with a script he > didn't quite understand - but you would otherwise swear you > were listening to a professional, blow-dried American > newscaster. Only a few words betray a hint of what you'd > call a PC accent. > > At the moment, the weakest MP3-enabled text reader is > iSpeak, from Fonix ($70 at www.fonix.com). It's supposed to > be able to read Microsoft Outlook 2000 e-mail messages > "with the click of a mouse," read text "from any Web page" > and "vocalize" words as you type. Unfortunately, all of > this excitement takes place only within the iSpeak program > window. Yes, it can read text from any Web page, if you > copy and paste it into iSpeak first. A handy iSpeak menu > does indeed appear in Outlook, but it just copies the > current message back into the iSpeak window. Sure enough, > the program can speak each word as you type it, provided > you're typing into the iSpeak program itself. > > At this point, iSpeak is also the only program that doesn't > capitalize on the AT&T Natural Voices (though it will soon; > more on this topic in a moment). Instead, it uses Fonix's > own voices, which are superior to the stock Microsoft and > Apple voices but feature a lot of what voice teachers call > glottal stops. You get the impression that the person doing > the reading keeps thwacking his own Adam's apple. > > Text-to-Audio ($50 at premier > -programming.com), on the > other hand, shows tremendous promise. It's the only > text-to-MP3 program that can import Microsoft Word files > for conversion, not just plain text files. It even displays > these files, formatting intact, and highlights the words as > it reads. Text-to-Audio comes with an MP3 playing program, > too, so you can double-check the resulting sound files > before committing them to a music player. > > Unfortunately, Text-to-Audio has more eccentricities than > Ross Perot. It can only recognize text files whose names > end with ".tx," rather than the standard ".txt," which > pretty much means you have to rename every file before you > import it. More damaging, though, are the glitches that > result when you choose one of those terrific AT&T voices. > For some reason the program ignores periods, turning every > document into a gigantic run-on sentence. It also treats > apostrophes as spaces, pronouncing "don't" as "donn-tee" > and "you'll" as "you L. L." Is there such thing as remedial > reading classes for computers? > > The company blames the AT&T voices for these glitches and > says an update is due this month. Yet TextAloud MP3 > (www.nextup.com, $25 with ordinary voices, or $51 with the > AT&T voices), a rival program that can also use those > voices, exhibits no such glitches. It's the undisputed > winner in this three-way Sound Like a Human contest. > > Better yet, TextAloud offers a couple of extremely useful > features that feel painfully absent in its competitors. For > example, only TextAloud can speak the words in the windows > of everyday programs like word processors, Web browsers and > e-mail programs (you press predefined keystrokes to start > and stop the talking). Furthermore, whenever you highlight > text in any program and then press Ctrl+C, the program > offers to sock that text away on its own internal > clipboard. The idea is that as you cruise through e-mail > messages, Web pages and other documents, you can build up a > playlist that you can later listen to, or convert to MP3's > en masse. The program exhibits a few bugs and misspellings, > and it still can't import (for conversion to MP3) anything > beyond plain text files or text you've copied, but it's > nonetheless the program to beat. > > None of these MP3-capable text readers are especially > user-friendly. The first time you fire one up, you're > likely to stare blankly, having no hint how to begin. > Furthermore, after you create a few MP3 files, finding them > on your hard drive and getting them onto your portable MP3 > player is left up to you. > > The ultimate MP3 text reader would bypass this problem by > loading its converted files directly onto the MP3 player. > It would accept Word and PDF files, read text from within > your favorite programs, and use AT&T's voices. As it turns > out, all of this is precisely what Fonix says it will offer > in iSpeak 3.0, scheduled for a June release. If the new > program lives up to the company's promises, it should be a > doozy. > > If you can't wait, TextAloud MP3 is a competent little > talker whose ability to read aloud any open document makes > it especially attractive. In any case, MP3-making text > readers open a new world of times and places in which you > can get work or "reading" done, made all the more pleasant > to listen to by AT&T's new voices. It's hard to see a > downside to technological advances like these - except, > perhaps, all those out-of-work Norwegian robots. > > Regards Steve, > mailto:srp at bigpond.net.au. > MSN Messenger: internetuser383 at hotmail.com. > > > > > -- > This mailing list is sponsored by the National Federation of the Blind, NFB. > To view or search an archive of messages for this list, go to: http://www.nfbnet.org > For more information about the NFB, please call (410) 659-9314, point your > internet browser to http://www.nfb.org or Telnet to nfbnet.org. >
