by Samuel Sennott
Check out the text to speech application ArtenSPEAK for Mac and Windows. It’s not Kurzweil, but it works.
Screenshot of the text to speech app ArtenSPEAK
From the website: ArtenSPEAK is a simple application that speaks text. You may drag or paste text into the ArtenSPEAK text area and when you depress the loudspeaker button the text will be read to you. Ideal for use with webpages, email, or any text document.
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I really can’t recommend ArtenSpeak for OS X. Firstly I couldn’t get it to speak at all, except for the automatic startup speech, but secondly what it does is totally unnecessary for Mac users. In most programs you can select text and use the commands in the Services menu or the Edit->Speech menu to have the highlighted section spoken with no copying or extra programs. If you are using a program where this doesn’t work then simply copy and paste the text into TextEdit (or, actually, any other program where speech does work) and use the trick there.
To make it even simpler, you can define a keyboard command to speak selected text, and then you don’t need to use the menus at all.
Best of luck!
Ricky
Ricky, You are so right on about using the built in Services menu and I really like how you can assign both a starting and stopping key for speaking text. Thanks for adding that in. I realize that a better post would be free text to speech workings and go through various tasks and match the tools/ hacks.
I stumbled upon the ArtenSPEAK and although it is limited, it does have a graphical button to initialize the speech. Also, a feature is the text does not need to be highlighted. One useful application would be for a teacher putting some directions in the box and the student could click to listen to them. Anyway, thanks again for the comment. It happened to make me realize that framework based posts might be much more useful.
Hi Guys
I’m not sure why Ricky couldn’t get the speech to work, i’ve never had any report of that at all. Also, just to clarify, ArtenSPEAK was designed for people who don’t necessary know or understand the Services menu or keyboard mapping. It is used a lot in schools for people with learning problems.
So I agree with Ricky it is not *necessary* but then neither is a GUI interface – yet we love our Macs
It is there free of charge for people who want it.
When I get a minute I’ll put in the option to change voices and save the recorded speech – which will make it more useful.
Cheers – Steve