TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics » text to speech

Review: Voice Dream Reader e-reading app

David Rothman — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:49:23 +0000

Note: An update of this post on LibraryCity.org focuses on education-related issues of read-aloud apps. A Catch-22 dogs those of us who most often read e-books visually but also want to hear them when we’re exercising or driving. The usual e-bookware doesn’t always come with or work with text to speech capabilities. Even if it does, we can’t control [...]

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Setting up Moon+ Reader for Text-to-Speech Using Ivona

Juli Monroe — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:15:50 +0000

I was presenting at a seminar last week, and someone came up to me afterwards and said he’d bought my book and was enjoying it. His only complaint was that the Kindle for Android app didn’t support text to speech, and he wished he could listen to my book while he was driving. “No problem,” [...]

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Bookshare introduces new products for disabled readers

Susan Lulgjuraj — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:00:44 +0000

Bookshare has developed two new digital products to help those with disabilities. Bookshare’s Web Reader and Bookshelf were announced at the Assistive Technology Industry Association conference, held January 30 through February 2 in Orlando, Fla. The products were created to help those with impairments such as learning disabilities, physical disabilities or low vision. The Web Reader will [...]

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Is Amazon’s Acquisition of Ivona good or bad for disabled e-library users?

David Rothman — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 20:45:13 +0000

Well, guess which Seattle-based megaconglomerate has just bought Ivona Software (Web site here, Wikipedia entry here)—perhaps the world’s best provider of text to speech to use with e-books and other texts? That’s right, Amazon. It’s already using an Ivona voice in the Kindle Fire, and Ivona tech is also powering “Voice Guide” and “Explore by Touch.” Too bad those [...]

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Kindle Fire HDs apparently can’t change line spacing …

David Rothman — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:10:45 +0000

Kindle Fire HD tablets apparently can’t change line spacing when you’re reading an e-book. Is this part of a consumer-hostile niching initiative by Amazon to high-pressure my fellow Kindle addicts into buying more than one gizmo? Yes, I suspect—if we consider similar disappointments, such as the omission of sound in the Paperwhite E Ink reader line. Separately, it [...]

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How to encourage Amazon to bring TTS to the Paperwhite

David Rothman — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 02:30:54 +0000

After I raised the issue of the Kindle Paperwhite being developed without a text-to-speech feature, a reader asked how she, too, could get in touch with Amazon to voice her displeasure. Incidentally, I had in mind not just blind people, but also joggers and other sighted folks who enjoy the “Read to me” feature. Beyond that, how about good text to [...]

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Follow That Story: Paperwhite’s suspiciously absent TTS

Dan Eldridge — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:30:25 +0000

Last Friday, we brought you a wonderfully seditious opinion piece written by TeleRead founder David Rothman about the fact that Amazon’s brand-new Kindle Paperwhite models were produced without text to speech (TTS) functionality. It’s an important essay, so click here to give it a read if you haven’t already. David tells us he’s been in [...]

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Elsevier Enables its e-Books to Read Aloud, Increasing Access for People With Print Disabilities

Paul Biba — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:04:49 +0000

From the press release: Elsevier, the world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and solutions, announced today that it has enabled the text-to-speech option on all of its ePub book titles. The text-to-speech function enables an e-book to read aloud. This will facilitate access by readers who would otherwise face a range of [...]

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UK Publishers Association says turn on text-to-speech

Paul Biba — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:09:18 +0000

From The Bookseller: The Publishers Association, The Society of Authors, The Association of Authors Agents and The Right to Read Alliance have released a joint ‘recommendation to publishers’ to encourage the use of the text-to-speak function on digital devices. The option is sometimes disabled in order to protect the rights of the audio-book publisher. The [...]

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Authors Guild and publishers oddly quiet on the matter of iPad’s VoiceOver

Chris Meadows — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:15:00 +0000

I didn’t notice this David Pogue article from August 12th until Techdirt and Slashdot pointed it out just the other day. Though most of the article is about other cool features offered by iOS 4 (unified contacts, Facetime tricks), in the last section Pogue talks about the VoiceOver “spoken books” feature on the iPad and [...]

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Kindle books cheaper in UK than US; more text to speech as well

Stephen Windwalker, editor of The Kindle Nation — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:36:35 +0000

This isn’t scientific, but it certainly communicates the basic truth of the matter as of August 5. As of 4:30 pm Eastern time today, August 5, a US Kindle customer could have purchased the top 25 bestselling books in the US Kindle Store sales rankings for a grand total of $252.10. Over in the UK, [...]

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Parent vs Reader, Round 2: Dad vs Kobo

Joanna Cabot — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:15:27 +0000

I wrote in January about turning my stepfather loose on the Amazon Kindle. Today was Round 2 in the ‘Parent vs Reader’ escapades. I met my Dad for coffee today and took the Kobo Reader with me to amuse myself while I waited for him. He noticed it when he arrived and spent some time [...]

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Looktel bringing hand-held text-to-speech to Windows Mobile smartphones

Chris Meadows — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:00:38 +0000

Remember the Intel Reader, the $1500 handheld device that acts as a hand-held portable scanner/OCR/text-to-speech device for the blind? A company called LookTel is in the beta stage of bringing something similar to Windows Mobile camera phones. The device will speak aloud text (package labels or street signs) or identify currency within its field of [...]

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Apple releases iBooks information

Chris Meadows — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:15:00 +0000

Apple has posted a webpage with details about the iBooks iPad app. There are a couple of points of particular interest to TeleReaders. First of all, iBooks will allow you to “add free ePub titles to iTunes and sync them to the iBooks app on your iPad.” That’s right, the page specifically uses the word [...]

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Through text-to-speech, Roger Ebert can speak again

Chris Meadows — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:15:00 +0000

For the past several years, film critic Roger Ebert has been unable to talk, due to complications from cancer surgery that left him without a lower jaw. But thanks to CereProc, a company that mines words and syllables from existing audio sources (such as the many commentary tracks and TV shows Ebert has recorded) and [...]

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