I am a laryngectomee and cannot speak except with a Servox electronic gizmo. Do you know of any software that will instantaneously convert my keystrokes to spoken word with both reasonable volume and natural tone? Everything I read about text-to-speech seems to be about mobile phone SMS or dyslexia, and local computer stores are useless. Steve Rowlands
Text-to-speech (TTS) software is generally aimed either at providing access for blind and partially sighted users, or at reading texts aloud, and is already built into Windows (go to Start, select Run, and type narrator).
Although there are dozens of Windows TTS programs (eg at download.com and at filetransit.com), I suspect you'd do better with E-triloquist, which was "developed as a family project". It will speak what you type, but it also lets you assign up to 48 words or phrases to hotkeys. Pressing one key can therefore say "thank you" or "please wait a moment" or whatever. These phrases can be voice recordings, and the site says: "Dad found that his trumpet fanfares and assorted noises were quite valuable for getting the attention of a group." There's a YouTube video here.
Getting natural-sounding voices is another matter. Windows XP seems to come with Sam while Vista has Anna, but you can try a few others. E-triloquist works with Microsoft Agent voices, and some free ones are available. Among the commercial ones, E-triloquist mentions AT&T Natural Voices and NeoSpeech Voices, which are both available from NextUp.
Backchat: Martin Saunders says he's been using a free Windows program called Natural Reader, and reminds me that I'd previously recommended the old Lernout & Hauspie voices, Michelle and Michael.
