Text-to-speech (TTS) is a relatively old technology: Texas Instruments started making the speech synthesis chips used in its Speak & Spell toy in the 1970s. They should make life easier for people who, for whatever reason, struggle with small screens, tiny buttons and incomprehensible user interfaces. Alexa will also appear on Amazon’s £39.99 Fire TV Stick on 6 April.Īlexa won’t work for your wife if she has “no speech”, but voice-driven AI systems like Alexa can not only answer questions and play audio, they can operate a lot of smart gadgets.
Google has yet to launch its copycat product, Google Home, in the UK, but it’s expected in this year’s second quarter. There are other AI-based PAs including Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri, but Alexa is already available on the Amazon Echo, which makes it instantly available for voice commands. The longer version would be “a voice-recognition system with intelligent personal assistant software that can play audio on demand”. In the future, I may have a two-word answer: Amazon Alexa. CD audiobooks are not as common, but you may find some titles your wife would like. Prices vary, but you can often pick up cheap bundles for £1 per book, or less. You may need to use different technologies for different types of material.Įither way, remember that cassettes have been doing this job for decades, and there are thousands of tapes on .uk. The possibilities include good old-fashioned cassette tape recorders, specialised talking book readers such as the Victor Reader Stream, CD players, MP3 players, smartphones, tablets and PCs. There are lots of answers to this question, but they may not work for your wife. This is far too fiddly for my wife to use. I have installed OverDrive for RNIB talking books on my phone. If so, which tablet/which app? It needs a really simple interface or my wife will not be able to use it without assistance. A shop assistant suggested a tablet with a text-to-speech app. I thought of getting her a Kindle e-reader but they don’t seem to do text to speech any more. She can select TV channels on a remote but she cannot read a short news story let alone a novel, so she listens to the radio and watches a lot of TV. My wife used to love reading but since her stroke has aphasia, no speech, limited vision and limited dexterity in her left hand only.
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