I’m looking for a good software that will take a text, such as from the Internet, and read it aloud to me or store the spoken text as a wav file (so I can write it to a CD and listen to it in the car for example).

I found the TextAloud shareware and the results are acceptable and it’s just $50. Does anyone have any experience with other products, especially one that will read in languages other than English?

Ilka

My brother, who is blind, uses something like that for computer work. I’ll send him some email and find out what he uses. I’m pretty sure, however, that it will be DOS or UNIX/LINUX based.

Patricia/AgDrgn

Windowsbridge is used by a friend who is blind. The developer doesn’t seem to have a website, but Google gets enough returns to make further investigation easy.

DecTalk is a superb older system that requires external hardware. It may only work under DOS.

You might already have Narrator installed if you are using Windows.  I have it on Win2K at work.  I seem to recall some kind of text-to-speech option that can be installed with Internet Explorer.

You can use ReadPlease for US$50, TextSound and CoolSpeech ($30 each). They all seem to work OK, but I have never used them in a continuous basis to be able to give any sensible advice.

Surprisingly, the voice-input program Dragon Naturally Speaking Professional provides one of the best reading voices, very natural sounding. And when you answer back, it understands and obeys you.

The best dictation system in our researched opinion, but it does need a lot of memory - this is one piece of software that uses hardware for your benefit (as opposed to merely consuming it).

Bryn

Thank you all for your input. This is a summary of what I found, in case someone else is interested in these products, too.

TextAloudMP3: English only, MP3-capability, AT&T Natural Voice, $25 for full version

ReadPleasePlus: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, AT & T Natural Voice, $85 with English + $45 for each additional language

Dragon Naturally Speaking Primarily intended for speech-to-text. $199. Includes RealSpeak software.

Cool Speech and Text Sound: English only, MP3-capability, $30

iSpeak (by the decTalk people): English only, MP3-capability, $50

WindowsBridge by Synthavoice seems to be out of business.

Windows Narrator is only supported by the English-language version of Windows XP.

Ilka