What you can do with TextAloud:
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Sit back and relax while your PC reads to you |
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Save text to MP3 for portable audio players |
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Proofread your own writing |
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Listen to that report while you're on the treadmill |
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Find help for someone with a reading disability |
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Create messages for your answering machine |
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Reduce eye strain from too much reading |
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Listen to information while you work on something else |
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Take some reading along for your daily walk or run |
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Turn your iPod into a tax write-off |
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Listen to an eBook during your commute |
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Study English as a Second Language |
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Help a senior citizen or someone with low vision |
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Add some spice to your PowerPoint presentations |
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Find a great new tool to study for exams |
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Listen to text read in other languages |
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Amuse your kids by letting your PC read stories to them |
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Create audio files for computer games |
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Prepare for a big speech by hearing your words read aloud |
New Look
TextAloud 2.0 has a new look. The biggest
difference is shown in Multi-Article Mode. Only a single article is
shown at a time, and the a dropdown list that shows titles of all
articles and allows article switching is at the top of the window.
This makes the interface cleaner, and also corrects TextAloud 1.x
problem that limited max number of articles to 20-40. Number of
articles should be virtually unlimited.
There are also new toolbar options to allow you
to change the size of the toolbar icons and choose whether you want
the toolbar to have captions or not.
The new version of our screen reader software
supports skins. Skins allow you to easily change the color scheme
and look of the TextAloud window. Do View->Skins on the main menu.
The download has 5 skins included, with links to download more.
Advanced Article Font Controls
Via Options->Article Font and Colors, you can
now not only control font size, but font and window colors of both
normal text and highlighted text.
Voice/Pitch Change on main window
You抣l notice that on the main window of our
screen reader there is now a speed control slider visible (as well
as pitch slider on voices that support it). This allows you to make
adjustments to the currently selected voice even while speaking is
underway.
These adjustments are also available on the
Edit menu with shortcut keys.
Options/Preferences moved to Options
Menu
TextAloud 1.X had several options displayed on
the main menu, including the familiar Clipboard, Voices/Engines,
File Options, and Misc. Options TABs on the TextAloud main window.
This was ugly, and caused sight-impaired users a great deal of
trouble. All of these settings have been moved off to Options->TextAloud
Options, and Options, Voice and File Options.
Support for opening more file types
TextAloud 1.x would only open .txt files from
File->Open. TextAloud 2.0 can now directly open text files (.txt),
Rich Text Files (.rtf), Microsoft Word Files (.doc), local HTML
Files, and local PDF Files (.pdf).
Batch File Conversion
Available under File->Batch File Converter,
this utility makes it simple to convert a large number of files
containing text to audio files.
Support for voice changes within a
single article
When you set our screen reader to use SAPI5
Only under Voice and File Options, you are now able to change voices
within a single text article. The right-click menu contains a new
entry, Insert Voice Change.
Proofreading Hotkey
To make proofreading documents and emails
easier, we抳e created a new hotkey for proofreading. This can be set
under Options->Hotkey Setup. Once created, you can be working in
another program (for example an email you are composing or a
document you are writing), you highlight a paragraph or two of text
that you want to listen to, and then hit your proofread hotkey
combination. A window will open, showing the text highlighted as it
is spoken. You can adjust the voice as desired on this window. If
you notice a mistake as the text is spoken, simply click anywhere on
this window and speaking stops and the window closes, returning you
to your document to make the correction. This offers a quicker,
simpler way of proofreading without having to interact with
TextAlouds main window.
Bookmarks
We've added bookmark functionality on the Edit
menu, allowing you to set bookmarks within articles, and move to
them with menu entries.
Internet Explorer Plugin
We've created a plugin for Internet Explorer,
to allow easier use of text from web pages. After installing
TextAloud 2.0, you may need to reboot before this will be
available. Within internet explorer, choose View->Toolbars->TextAloud
for IE. This will cause a new toolbar to be displayed on the IE
toolbar. You may need to drag this toolbar or resize it to get all
the items to display. The toolbar contains 5 elements
- Speaker Icon ?speaks text selected within
IE, or all text on a page if no text is highlighted
- Stop ?Stops current speaking
- Copy ?Copies text that is selected in IE as
a new article into TextAloud for use within TextAloud.
- Options ?opens options related to the IE
plugin
- Voice Selection ?Allows you to select voice
for use when speaking from Internet Explorer
Ability to change sample rate on
output WAVE Files
We get this request a lot. TextAloud 2.0 will
allow you to specify the sample rate of TextAloud created wave
files, IF you set TextAloud to use SAPI5 Only on the Voice Options
TAB.
System Requirements
- Win 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP
- Minimum P200
- 64MB RAM
- 10MB Disk Space
- Sound Card
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