How to open presentations with PowerTalk that have extension .pptx and reading math text

[sm78...@albany.edu]

Hello. I just downloaded PowerTalk on my Windows 7 laptop and I have PowerPoint 2010 (full version). All of my PowerPoint presentations are saved with the extension .pptx, but it seems that PowerTalk only opens  .ppt and .pps files. Is there a solution to this problem? I tried renaming one of my .pptx files with the extension .ppt, but my system warns me that changing the file extension name could deem the file unusable. What do you suggest I do? I have Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and since I have low respiratory reserves, I often get breathless toward the end of giving a presentation, so I decided to give PowerTalk a try. In addition, I'm a mathematics PhD student in the USA and I will be taking a course where I'm required to give presentations in operator theory/functional analysis so I was wondering if PowerTalk can speak math or math related text. I hear that MathPlayer has math-to-speech capability for PowerPoint, but only for the 32-bit version, and I have the 64-bit version, which seems pretty frustrating. I would highly appreciate your response as soon as you possibly can, thank you for your time.

Regards,

Sachin Munshi

[Steve Lee]

Hi Sachin

PowerTalk does support pptx files. Have you got the latest version? See
http://fullmeasure.co.uk/powertalk/

If files do not open from within power talk you can trie right
clicking on the file and choosing 'narrate with PowerTalk'. If that
option is not available try re installing and make sure you choose the
option.

It's fantastic you find PowerTalk useful. It was created for someone
with Aspasia.

PowerTalk has no understanding of Maths - just text. However you can
supply Alt Text for any text object on a slide and that will be read
out. Thus you could manually supply a translation of formulas.

I'm not familiar with MathPlayer but that is an unfortunate
limitation. Perhaps you could contact the authors and ask for a 64bit
build?

I'll ask around to see if anyone knows an alternative

Cheers


Steve Lee
OpenDirective http://opendirective.com

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[Steve Lee]

A couple of ideas from EA Draffan and David Banes

* Use STEMReader https://stemreader.org.uk/ to make a recording that
is embedded into PowerPoint
* Central Access might be of interest
http://redbridgeserc.org/resources/entry/central-access-reader-free-screen-reader-that-reads-maths-accurately
& https://www.cwu.edu/central-access/reader
* Also NVDA works well with https://www.mathjax.org/ - not sure how
that could help you in PowerPoint though.

Do let me know how you get on

Steve Lee
OpenDirective http://opendirective.com