[Athen] technology support for Arabic

[Wink Harner]

Excellent info, Jeff. Thanks also to Sean & Teresa for their input. Some
experimenting is definitely in order.

Wink


-----Original Message-----
From: athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu
[mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Jeffrey
Dell
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2012 2:54 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] technology support for Arabic

Using the TTS ro VO on Mac will not do the automatic switching that R&WG
will for european languages.  When I was trying TTS on Mac using Asian
voices it would read the english but not the Chinese or Japanese
characters.  You might run into the same problems with Arabic.  If you set
the Mac for the specific language it would probably do better with
identifying characters and words.  The language handling on Mac is not as
efficient as it is on iOS.  Which I think is kind of amusing.
I've had better luck with nonwestern languages on Windows.  NeoSpeech and
Acapela sell voices that run as SAPI 5.  Acapela if I remember right has a
great Arabic voice.  This can then run as a SAPI 5 voice with R&WG,
WordTalk, and many other programs that use SAPI 5 Voices.
You will not have all the writing support that the programs offer but it
will read it.  If you are running XP on the computer you will need to set
up Complex Right to Left Scripting Languages in the Regional and Language
Options.  For Vista and 7 There are specific versions that will support
Arabic.  Microsoft has that info on their website.
http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html
Jeff

On 4/30/12, Sean J Keegan <skeegan at stanford.edu> wrote:

> Hi Wink,

>

>  > A student on the campus told me today that she would like  > to 

> take Arabic and asked if there is any text-to-speech  > technology 

> available in Arabic.

>

> There is a TTS voice in Arabic that is available as a free download in 

> Apple OS X Lion.  If you go to the System Preferences > Speech > 

> System Voice and then choose "Customize" you will be able to find many 

> different languages.  Just download the preferred voice and you are 

> all set.

>

> Here is the note from Apple:

> http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html#accessibility

>

> Here is a YouTube video of the TTS voice:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gut0-dZs2I

>

> Take care,

> Sean

>

> --

> Sean Keegan

> Associate Director, Assistive Technology Office of Accessible 

> Education - Stanford University http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae

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