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Education The Internet

Web Browsers and Text-to-Speech Solutions? 39

Posted by Cliff from the technology-based-teaching-tools dept.
JZ_o8 asks: "I work for an online education company that needs to be able to accommodate students who, in some cases, are several grades behind in their reading level. We are investigating screen reading technologies that might serve as a supplement for these students. We have considered technologies such as AT&T Natural Voices Text-to-Speech Engine but the process is time-intensive and cumbersome. Development requires a desktop application which encodes text into a web audio format such as MP3. This of course raises issues about page updates and dynamic content which would render any accompanying speech files, obsolete. It seems like the best solution would be browser support, perhaps via a plug-in, that would give the user Text to Speech capabilities. Something like selecting a passage of text with the mouse and right-click to select 'Speak'. Or maybe a server-side solution that would dynamically generate media files for pages on the fly? Or just when they're changed? Does anyone have any suggestions - solutions that I am overlooking. This seems like a useful and logical piece of technology....if it doesn't exist I wonder why not."
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Web Browsers and Text-to-Speech Solutions? More

Web Browsers and Text-to-Speech Solutions?

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  • Look at the Lizzard (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OneFix ( 18661 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @10:37PM (#5331757)
    Access Mozilla [sourceforge.net] should be a good starting point...even better is that ViaVoice is free for the disabled...

    Blind Linux [leb.net] is also a good start...

    As a side note, if these students are not disabled, then it might be better to use a browser to teach them to read rather than have it read for them...
  • I've been looking for something that'll take my eBooks on my iPaq and read them to me while I'm driving...
    as for webpages... At least on windows, wouldn't it be possible to use the Microsoft Agent [microsoft.com] program and make your own plugins? I remember back in my mIRC days, you could integrate the agent with your scripts and sort of do what you want, but it wasn't really that good.

  • mac os (Score:2, Informative)

    by thesatirist ( 532124 )
    In OS X all you have to do is highlight text, go to Services, select Speech, and there you go. This sounds perfect for your needs.

  • HCIL? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by imsmith ( 239784 )
    the Human Computer Interaction Lab [umd.edu] at the U of Maryland might be a place to look. I don't know that they have exactly what you are looking for, but the are spending a bit of effort working on interfaces specifically for learning and special access needs and they are designed with commercialization of their products in mind.

  • Mac OS X has this feature (Score:3, Interesting)

    by panck ( 69848 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @11:09PM (#5331981)
    I just selected your article contents in my web browser (happens to be Safari, but this works in any browser) Then I chose the menu item Safari->Services->Speech->Start Speaking Text

    Even better, you can enable os X to speak the selected text via a user-defined keystroke, or even all the text underneath the cursor. (in the Speech Preference Panel)

    If you're using windows though, I dunno..
  • That someone could be "several grades behind in their reading level" and would need to have their lessons read to them?
    • It's sad, but it's all part of the dumbing down [eagleforum.org] of our school system in the US.
      It's a joke to think that you can honestly pass a class without being able to read and understand the material on your own, and an insult to those of us who actually try for standards.
    • No.
      I am astounded that someone would get the idea that person's behind in their reading level need to be further empowered to remain illiterate.

    • That is exactly the issue I raised to our curriculum director. While the solution that would best suit the kids would be to teach them to read....the reality is that we have to offer courses that the school districts will fund and remedial courses aren't part of the budget.

      The kids we target are alternative students....drop-outs, discipline problems, pregant, etc. Completion is the driving factor....not holistic learning. Kind of sad when business decisions are made in priority to education decisions but in this age of ridiculous public school funding it is reality.

  • Cart before the horse? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @11:12PM (#5332000)
    Hmmm, there is a little part of me that is feeling like Clifford Stoll right now... What the hell are you doing having illiterate kids doing using a computer? Why don't you have them spend time in a remedial 1 on 1 session to teach them to read, instead of pushing them even further into material they can't read?

    I know that your only looking to fufil the request of your customers (in this case the schools), I find it incredibly worrisome, that people are worried about how to get around the fact that the student can't read instead of attempting to actually teach the student to read at the appropriate level. Especially since the ability to read is probably more important then absolutely anything they will learn thru the computer system. Learning to read would enable them to learn anything they want later in life on their own, without some damn computer to read to them....

    Kirby

    • I agree with you, the students should be taught how to read instead of being given a crutch to appreciate computer-learning; however, more alarming is the idea that people might propose to have computer educate our children how to read.

      In my experience, I've found many people get excited by technology. Better living through chemistry has been replaced with better living through computers. However, teachers are expensive - more expensive than computers and there is a monetary as well as opportunity cost to have a human instructor teach a child to read. That instructor is then unable to teach other students.

      Frankly, I think multimedia initiatives and wiring up elementary schools with ethernet and satelite links is ridiculous. I believe that the ultimate goal of school is to teach someone how to learn. This means learning reading, writing, math, scientific reasoning, etc. Most of the basic things taught in elementary school.

      For example, the point of writing most papers in primary and secondary school is not to learn the subject matter, but to learn how to research a topic (any topic) and write a coherent, legible paper about it.

      Any school library will have more than enough resources more papers than teachers can assign their students. Given the goals for that period in a student's education, a student's ability to learn is not limited by the scope of your average school library and is not further enabled by access to more information through the internet.

      Frankly, I think we need to reevaluate priorities. Teachers, after all, are the most versatile educational instrument available. I think we should focus less on computers for students, and more teachers for children. (E.g, Maine providing ibooks for students; Wiring up impoverished third-world villages.)

      A single teacher with no other resources can achieve more than ten times his/her salary in educational tools.

      P.S. I realize this is semi-offtopic. It's an observation on the use of computers in school and how they are utilized.
    • I agree 100%. But I'm not in charge of curriculum - only web dev. It was made clear to me that offering a remedial reading course is not something that our customers would support. Its very sad, really, that school districts are measured by graduation rates and dropout recovery, instead of creating well-rounded, educated human beings.

    • while I understand your idea, I think you are missing some important ideas. Some people find they really suck at one thing, but are just fine at everything else. Why hold a normal (or even gifted!) student of math back just because he cannot read the text. A little text-to-speach, and the student can learn while the teacher goes on to other students.

      Of course if a teacher or dtudent uses this as a crutch to get by iwthout teaching/learning reading, then there is a problem. However if this allows a student to not be bored while the teacher teaches someone less gifted elsewhere, then that seems like a good idea.

      I personally suck at spelling (Where I used the word "idea" above I ment setiment, but that isn't even close to correct and I'm not sure if you can figgure out what word I ment. I'm sure you can find other mispellings). I do just fine with math though. There is no reason my teachers should have held me back in math when my spelling is bad. OTOH they should have spent more time on my spelling, even though will never be good.

      • Blindness is about the only thing reason I'd accept a person being unable to read within several grade levels of their current age. Unless they have some disability, or physical impairment I don't believe that they should work around the fact that they can't read well.

        This isn't like giving a person with no hands an artifical set of hands, this is like someone who lacks motor control to not work at using their hands, and instead teaching them to use their feet in place of their hands.

        Schools aren't there to teach you what you have a natural aptitude for, they are there to teach you a specific set of things. If your good at math, you'll pick that up speedily when you can read the book on your own. So you don't need a computer to learn mathematics. No computer can teach you anything that a book can't. A teacher can teach you all sorts of things computers can't. These schools need to realize that teaching the student to read is the path to success. There is no other way to get there. They have to be able to read. Sorry, teaching them more math isn't the answer. Teaching them to read is.

        What happens when they reach a level of mathematics they can't find on the web? What happens when they graduate or drop out of school and no longer have access to the computer program they are dependant on to learn? A school that creates a person who is dependant on the verbal form is a bad idea? What is it that makes you think that verbalizing it will make it any easier for them. Most of the reason you can't read at a high enough level is about vocabulary and idioms of the language, and just not enough time spent reading. Do you think speaking them out loud will make them simpiler. No, you have to construct the material so they'd be able to read it anyways. At which point, they can read it, not listen to it so no need for the software. Sorry, but an institution of learning working around the inability to read just is really bad. Reading is so incredibly fundamental to so many things in life that it's irresponsible to spend time and money working around the inability to read, when those resources should be devoted to learning to read.

        Kirby

    • For someone who is dyslexic learning to read may take many years beyond what is considered normal.
      As a result, dyslexics tend to fall behind in other subjects since so much of our educational process involves written material. This product could help them bridge the gap that forms while they are catching up on their reading skills.
      • Okay, that falls into the blindness plus other disability category. However, the original questioner has in fact said that these are mearly people who are behind. Because they have chronic absenteeism, got pregnant, or have behavioral problems. They are alternative students for some reason that isn't a disability (okay it might be an undiagnosed disability) from the original posters responses, that's who they are. They aren't people who are dyslexic or blind for the most part from his own description of the target audience.

        If he wants it for blind or disabled people I understand. However, this sounds distinctly like a case of, "we should use technology to replace teachers, because technology is the solution to all problems". This sounds like well a computer program that costs $500, plus a $400 computer, and some electricity, and we'll be able to teach all those alternative students without devoting the extra resources to them they need. Most alternative students need actual honest to god real help, from a real person, who'll devote time to them. They don't need to spend more time in front of a frustrating cold unfeeling machine. Teaching is an art. I've done it before at various levels in math and computer science. It absolutely can't be duplicated by a computer under any circumstances.

        Kirby

  • MacOS X (Score:2, Informative)

    by DiSKiLLeR ( 17651 )
    MacOS X has this handy little 'services' menu.

    Services -> Speech -> Start talking now

    Will convert any text highlighted in just about any application into speech.

    Its real wierd getting it to say some unix stuff from terminal ;)

    Not sure if such a solution exists for windows, however.

    Still, letting them play with Apple's and MacOS X would be almost like rewarding them for not being able to read.........

    D.
    • mac classic had text to speech like almost forever. I used to use it sometimes when I was like cooking in the kitchen and wanted to "hear" the news or a long forum thread from someplace when I was away from the keyboard.
  • Never really went anywhere, but feel free to check it out...

    http://www.cloudcitydigital.com/resense/
  • http://www.festvox.org/
    I tried the Edinburgh version a few years back. It sounds computerish, but understandable. I used lynx to dump web pages to it. I had it set it up to read articles from the Christian Science Monitor's web site to me while I washed dishes. That fell by the wayside after my son was born...
  • Don't both Windows (at least XP) and MacOS both already have built in TTS and other accessability features that pretty much acomplish just this. Reading web pagess and other documents shouldn't be to difficult.

    • My further research has led me to believe that the built-in OS options have to be the best solution.

      I looked at third-party plug-ins, active-x controls, etc. Unfortunately most of them are not cross-browser/cross-platform/inexpensive/etc. Not practical for imposing on a low-tech user.

      The other solutions either involve real-time server-side processing and streaming (*shudders*) or a cumbersome desktop application and streaming media.

      OS X seems to handle speech very well...but I can't figure out how to use it in Windows. I have the Speech control panel in Win XP that allows me to choose speech engines, but I have no idea how to actually get anything on screen to read.

      • Windows TTS options:
        • Microsoft's SAPI SDK [microsoft.com] includes an app called "Microsoft Mouth" that will speak the contents of the clipboard (and show you mouth movements at the same time). Not automatically whenever the clipboard changes, unfortunately, but source is provided.
        • Karen Kenworthy [karenware.com] has written a tool called Power Toy [karenware.com] that uses the Agent control to do TTS (as well as voice recognition and all the other Agent features). Again, not set up for automatic clipboard speaking.
        • Agent Reader [aldostools.com] is one of the many 3rd party tools I found that will use SAPI to automatically speak the clipboard contents.
        • You could always search for yourself. [google.com]
        • Or of course you could roll your own. Back in 1999 I rolled my own app that copied a text representation of an access table to the clipboard, which then used MS Mouth to speak it. This was so I could quickly verify long lists of typed numbers.
      • On WinXP ...

        Start > All Programs > Accessories > Accessibility > Narrator

  • You might try searching for accessible computing stuff - screen readers, in particular. JAWS (Job Access With Speech) [freedomscientific.com] is popular. You might also be interested in IBM Home Page Reader [ibm.com].

    That said, shouldn't kids be learning how to read? There are a number of games that help kids develop reading skills, and it's certainly a very useful skill. Not all books are in electronic form, after all...

  • Open simpletext. Leave the blank untitled document window open. Slelect the text that you wish to have read. Drag it to the simpletext doc and drop. Apple-J to speak selection.

    Not perfect, but perfection could do less to encourage them to find a better solution.

  • A couple products immediately come to mind; excuse the debian-isms:

    1. konqueror [debian.org] with konq-speaker [debian.org]
    2. IIRC, you can use emacspeak [debian.org] with the emacs w3 browser... not positive about that though

    3. Konqueror is certainly easier (for me) to get running, YMMV.

  • actually you have already started playing with/sconsidering something that might be of use. I use textaloud mp3 as a front end for the att natural voices engine (with which I am MOST impressed) to actually read project gutenberg e-texts to mp3. I then burn 4 or 5 books to cd and listen to them on my commute. There is a server component of this that can be hooked into. They actually do something similar to this one the ATT natural voices web site [att.com] you should be able to use wget your favorite means to get a page interactively, scrape the contents (a few perl Regex's perhaps) and then pipe it through the server component ont he fly to spit out wav or mp3 files. This would allow you to have any given page read out loud in real time.
  • They're an online learning company... Very possibly "thinkcage," which appears to be getting revved up to launch in early 2002 "or sooner." Sarcasm aside, they do not appear to be in the process of buying hardware solutions, or choosing the platforms that their clients will be utilizing.

    Is there a way to enable a speaking engine across browsers, so that anyone can listen as well as read? Sure, use Flash. But it will drive your costs through the roof.

    Offer a flash-based reading course available and get them some reading proficiency first. Nobody should graduate without the ability to read enough to learn at a high-school level. High-school textbooks aren't exactly Heidegger, and your through-the-cracks targets will probably require simplified language usage anyway. In simple terms, you can't use big words anyway. You would be reading to them because they can't read at all, not because they can't understand the language. If they can't read at all, learning that Ronald Regan was the 50th president of the United States won't do them any good, as they won't have the capability to actualize on that knowledge.

    Don't do it. Focus on the kids you *can* help. Improve your curriculum, and do extensive studies with students to find out their patterns / needs / successes / weaknesses. And yes, offer a reading course. But quite frankly if your students are graduating your course (and highschool) while remaining entirely or functionally illiterate, you might as well just sell diplomas.

    I tend to think that the person who Asked Slashdot doesn't want to be in the business of selling diplomas. And judging by hir comments about hirs cirriculum director, I would think ze too would rather students become literate rather than graduate without useful knowledge. I hope hirs cirriculum director is reading these comments with a critical eye: while Ask Slashdots do tend to draw fewer solutions to goals than people critical of your goals, in this case such criticism is warranted. Nobody should get a High-School diploma without being able to read. Period. Focus your limited funding on those people you can help, and leave those you can't to the system that bred them. Or, as I mentioned, make an online literacy course available to those people willing to put in the effort.
    • Good guess, but Thinkcage is my personal space....as is my slashdot login. The company is Advanced Academics [advancedacademics.com]. We are already in business helping kids and school districts every day. Unfortunately, a remedial program is not an option, despite what you (and I) think. And I do agree with you. I'm looking for technology solutions here, not opinions about the methods.
      • Try pwWebSpeak [soundlinks.com].
        From their write up, it sounds like it might be a solution.
        " pwWebSpeak is an Internet browser designed for users who wish to access the Internet in a non-visual or combined auditory and visual way. This includes blind or partially sighted users, people with dyslexia or learning difficulties, and users who are learning new languages."

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