Text To Speech Software For Visually Impaired
Daria
Features include: reads aloud content on the screen (e.g, documents. emails, websites) and what item currently contains focus, such as a button, menu item, and form field, on the computer screen
Features include: take a picture of the text, and select to listen aloud, or turn it into braille. Takes pictures of text as you turn the page. Also does not rely on Wi-Fi, makes it faster than other apps.
Balabolka is a free text-to-speech engine that boasts quality and flexibility. It gets your text converted to audio and can be used in any of the e-Learning applications. Available on Chrome, Apple and Android.
Features include: Dictionary, can make playlists, hands-free and hands-on, artificial intelligence, extract main article content from a web page, upload any popular document type, multi-lingual, can be used on the go.
Features include: collaborate in real-time within digital documents, read text, including math & science equations, aloud with easy-to-follow dual color highlighting, use freehand or shape drawing to scribble and draw on your digital documents
Read Aloud uses text-to-speech (TTS) technology to convert webpage text to audio. It works on a variety of websites, including news sites, blogs, fan fiction, publications, textbooks, school and class websites, and online university course materials.
Features include: select from a variety of text-to-speech voices, including those provided natively by the browser, as well as by text-to-speech cloud service providers such as Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson, and Microsoft, can read PDF, Google Docs, Google Play books, Amazon Kindle, and EPUB
Features include: listen to Gmail, Google Docs, PDFs, listen at up to 9x the average reading speed and in over 20 different languages, save content to your library from your desktop or your phone and listen to it all anytime, anywhere.
Features include: 36 built-in iOS voices in 27 languages are also available for free, scan paper documents with the camera for text-to-speech, optimized for VoiceOver, Braille and switch control.
Read&Write for iPad is a powerful keyboard replacement that works in every app. Supporting reading, writing, comprehension and vocabulary development, Read&Write provides a rich set of features which extend accessibility and provide a range of tools to help with literacy. Also offers a Chrome extension.
NaturalReader is a downloadable text-to-speech desktop software for personal use. This easy-to-use software with natural-sounding voices can read to you any text such as Microsoft Word files, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails.
I am the developer of the app Speech Central, one of the leading text-to-speech apps in terms of features, user satisfaction, growth and overall usage. Starting from August 1st 2021 the app is completely free for the blind people without any hidden cost.
There is no trick, my revenues from other users are enough to support the ongoing development of the app and I have decided to help to those in need. I believe that the app meets or exceeds the features of other leading text-to-speech apps and I'll be glad to hear opinions and suggestions for the new features and improvements.
P.S. at the moment the app exists for the macOS too, but as it is a paid app it is not possible to detect whether the user uses some assistive technology before the purchase and as such it is technically impossible to make it free for the blind users only.
I have heard of your app before, but, never had the funds to use it.
I'm completely blind, and a tech nerd to boot. Because I'm a geek, I'm always on the lookout for any apps like yours or other similar assistive tech apps that could help me. So, I'm always either looking at apps, or trying and playing around with new apps.
Thanks to you, and your users, I'll now have the chance to use your app! I can't wait to dig into it!
To me, saying "Thank you" is not enough. I'm always happy to support devs like you, however I can. I'm currently downloading it to my Ipad now.
Huge thanks for this. I have purcashe purchased the app already and thought it is such a great app exceeding other much more expensive ones in feature and implementation of features.
Looking for more features to be added in future, particularly Bookshare support and more file formats.
Good day. Thank you so much for taking this step, which can make the lives of many people with disabilities much easier. I have a suggestion for the next update, which will not be difficult to implement, but may help in some situations. perhaps it is worth making a separate tab in which you can paste text from the clipboard / print your own, and then so that by pressing the button it will be pronounced.
Hi just wanted to say I purchased the Mac app several months ago and I love it. Do to PDF's sometimes sucking on Mac your app is the only way I can sometimes read documents from work etc. I've never used the iPhone app do to using something else, but I will give it a go. Thanks! On the Mac have you ever thought about allowing for purchasing of other voices similar to what Voicedream does?
Thank you for this wonderful post. And also thanks to everyone who has posted, I'll reply directly just to those posts that require answer in order not to make too much noise, but I do appreciate every nice word posted above. This is probably the kindest community on the internet and I am really glad to be able to support it this way.
Also thanks for mentioning that paid users of my app deserve some honor as nothing could happen without them. I had that in mind and in the next version of the app they will receive the message 'your purchase supports the ongoing development of the app and keeping it free for the blind people' so that they can be aware of their good deed.
At the moment Bookshare is supported, you have probably noticed that after installing the app. I don't think it is possible to support NFBNewsline by 3rd party apps. I will consider to support Overdrive as you have suggested. I must say that Bookshare was virtually unused and at some point even removed from the app due to more than 99.9% of users not using it, but I have decided to bring it back for VoiceOver users and hopefully with this action it will gain some traction. After I receive such a data I will definitely consider to add new services.
I am really glad to hear your reaction. I must say that I was afraid that there can be a backlash of users that have paid, as that would be a problem both because I cannot issue refunds (it is done by App Store) and if I did for a large number of people at a short time that would be a significant financial problem for me. It is really great to see that people understand this message properly.
One thing to note is that the app supports Bookshare. There was some brief period when this was removed from the app due to virtual no usage, but for some time it is active again for VoiceOver users. Also you may provide some more information of what file formats you may appreciate to be added, that would be a very useful information.
I believe that at the moment there are good options to support the quick paste & read. If you open the context menu of the app from the iOS home screen there is such an option. There is also a Siri shortcut for that.
Just to note that while this is possible on macOS it is also fairly expensive, you can expect the price of 20-30$ for the same voices that are in range of 2-3$ on Android or in Voice Dream Reader on iOS, but in line on how much those voices cost on Windows. If Voice Dream Reader sold those voices on macOS they would have to charge this much, that is why it is not available on the Macs with M1 as EULA of those voices don't allow that.
wouldn't it be better if everything is in one place? :)
and another question: have you ever thought about adding the ability to view OPDS catalogs to your application? that is, books can be obtained directly from the application.
all the best to you Daniel
Well I haven't gone into the technical details, but there are more reasons why your current proposal can't be implemented at least not in its original form. The app has already 5 tabs. If you add the 6th tab as it can't be displayed at once the iOS will automatically make a new tab 'More' from which you can access overflowed tabs. That would place that 'Paste' tab into the 'More' group which wouldn't add anything to the efficiency and would break the concept and usability of the app.
There is already the Paste button in the Articles & Books page on the bottom of the items. I understand that this may be not as easy to be reached for blind people as for other people, but I don't have any better solution at the moment. I may try to focus it each time the user returns to the app, but for many blind users this would be rather a distraction than the help, not all users have the same usage pattern.
OPDS is already supported. You can add it in the Headlines (unfortunately OPDS is so rarely used that it doesn't make sense for it to be called 'Headlines & OPDS' though that would be a more correct title) and there are already some book catalogue links included in the Popular sites section.
I, too, would like to sincerely thank you for doing this. I've seen your app mentioned on here but due to my financial situation I couldn't purchase it. But now I can and most certainly will do so later this week. I think I can actually purchase some non-free apps now because I might have a better financial situation. But that's a topic for a different time and place. Anyway, I too am rather geeky and like to have all the latest and greatest tech so long as it works with screen readers. Again, thanks a million for permanently making your app free and best of luck to you in the future.
I hope you will consider if not add Overdrive. As for NFBNewsline, it is possible to support it. There's a service that supports it that is 3rd party, called Dolphin EasyReader. Although it is not very smooth or user-friendly. Frankly, I did not like Dolphin because of that reason, among others. Please don't think I'm saying anything mean, nasty, or otherwise bad. All I'm saying, is that it is possible to support NFBNewsline as a 3rd party. I do appreciate you being open to at least looking into new services. As for the services already listed, I love them! I especially love the support for social media! Especially because you either have 1 of 2 things when it comes to that. Sometimes both, but mostly, 1 or the other.
1. The social media app or site is not accessible for Vo. users.
2. Or, you have a social media app or site that seems to like breaking things or not making new things accessible for Vo. users. Or, you end up having to use a 3rd party client to access the service because that's more accessible than the app or site., site.