With Word MS have done with their voice assistant Cortana and her forthcoming like up with Alexa I would have liked to see learnings from those digital “Dames” applied to this accessibility tool. The female voice is the same as in the older vision of MS’ text to speech which is disappointing, as one the biggest barrier to people using text to speech can be the difficulty that some people have listening to synthetic and robotic sounding voices. There is a choice of ‘three’ voices Gorge, Hazel, and Susan (at the moment the two female voices sound exactly the same but I am sure this will be sorted in a future update). There’s also a settings icon which allows you to change the voice and speed of playback. Microsoft’s new and improve transport controls But I expect it was part of the recent update that also added a native dictation function to Office applications. It’s difficult to say how long this has been there, as there are often under the radar developments in Office that aren’t obvious to those not in the know. When I clicked as if by magic one by one the words of my email were brought to life in speech. So it’s needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when clicking through the menu of outlook I noticed a new button labeled ‘Read Aloud’. It’s no surprise the is a feature that few people know about and even fewer actually use.įor me, third-party apps like Claro Read or Read and Write have been the most suitable and effective text to speech options, the Microsoft option has only made an appearance when I am on a computer that doesn’t have any third-party app installed or when my computer is running really slow. Even if you jumped through all of the hoops to gain access, the reading the voice felt unnatural and the lack of settings (no ability to change the voice, reading speed, volume or control playback) didn’t make the user experience particularly good. It was hidden deep within an obscure options menu and once found, you had to manually add it to the Quick Access Tool Bar or Ribbon. Using text to speech in office for the longest time has quite frankly been a bit of a faff. Most of my writing is in Microsoft Word and although it has had text to speech capability for a while, it’s not something I was ever tempted to use unless there was no other option. Even today, with the wealth of assistive technology (AT) at my finger tips, text to speech is still the main weapon in my arsenal. Text to speech was the first piece of productivity-boosting tech I used when first looking into software that could help with some of my dyslexic difficulties. And even if you are not dyslexic if you speak English as a second language, want to give your eyes a rest or just wanted ramp up your productivity, using a computer reader can be a really effective tool. Give it a try yourself and decide if you want to use it more often.While speed reading and skimming are generally the go-to methods for more efficient reading, for me using ‘ Text to speech‘ has always been the best way to power through documents. Regardless of your intended purpose, speech to text software can spare your wrists and save you a lot of time. It easily translates speech into text, but the high price point might be prohibitive for heavy users. If you prefer to speak into a recording device and transcribe the text later, then Transcribe is the best pick. While pricey, it’s one of the most customizable and flexible tools on the market. On the other hand, if you want to write a book and you intend to heavily use speech to text, then Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a great option. If you only use voice transcription from time to time, then the default tools available in Windows 10 or with Otter will do just fine. Watching your words appear on screen is interesting and allows you to be much more productive while also sparing your wrists. If you spend a lot of time at the computer and you feel the strain in your wrists, give dictation a try. Two price tiers: self transcription at $20 per year, or automatic transcription at $6 per hour.Link a foot pedal to start and stop audio.Use the built-in text expander for common phrases.Transcribe audio into text in real-time.Uploaded recorded audio clips to transcribe them.
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