[Athen] other alternatives to Kurzweil?

[S A. Marositz]

Hi Kevin

Keep in mind the various solutions out there all use mostly the same TTS engines. So, competing products like R&W Gold and Claro will sound much the same as K3000 does to the student.

There are a couple things you could try:

1.       Apple’s Alex voice uses a lot of inflection and actually makes the sound of someone taking a breath between paragraphs. It comes pre-installed on Mac computers but I am pretty sure it is a separate download on iOS. Once installed it can be used with most TTS apps.

2.       Google’s TTS is quite good. I know of no AT that uses them off of the top of my head but I haven’t done any research either.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/27/google-text-to-speech-service-has-more-realistic-voices/

I think I would start by looking into AT that is browser based

HTH
Stephen Alexander Marositz JD, CPACC
Assistive Technology Specialist, Pasadena City College
Phone: (626) 585-7242

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Zach
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2018 4:43 PM
To: 'Access Technology Higher Education Network' <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] other alternatives to Kurzweil?

I know there is another product similar to Kurzweil made by Freedom Scientific (OpenBook), however if your student is having issues with computerized speech this may not be a solution. Another issue I would  caution you in regards to is that neither  Kurzweil nor OpenBook can reliably  recognize math characters. It is also my experience that they can have issues with tables, particularly complicated ones, and figures are out of the question. I myself rely on the aid of visual transcribers for dealing with math and figures.


Zac

Zachary Mason
M.S. Student
Animal and Dairy Sciences
Mississippi State University

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of JORDISON_SHAWN
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2018 7:29 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] other alternatives to Kurzweil?

Did you try the online version of Kurzweil? They’re voices are better IMO. The standalone/web licensing version uses the more robotic voices.

-          Shawn

From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Kevin Andrews
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2018 4:00 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] other alternatives to Kurzweil?

Hi all,

I met with a student who I've seen before. They are finding the voices very difficult with Kurzweil and from our discussion, they have tried a variety of voices, different rates of speech, etc, and reported disliking the robotic-sounding voices, not maintaining inflection appropriately, etc. We talked about Learning Ally, but just given a couple of the titles, I don't know this will be feasible since LA does not always carry the titles--as is the case for the one title they were able to give me already thus far.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? It seems computerized voices are problematic for the student. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated here.

--
Best,

Kevin Andrews
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Accessible Technology Coordinator,
Scribes and Readers Coordinator
Disability Resource Center
University of California, Santa Cruz
Website: drc.ucsc.edu<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fdrc.ucsc.edu&c=E,1,Lrx-pXcTSIYFDquf7mrSVPEH8tqLFkTmJNwkBjY9j-Bkmt34rhg5it5_LDK169y0vyMNno--DBwaK-3yDE8b3Q-Ngk-zrMrZe78XAW4zrTXn5_lk4A,,&typo=1>


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