Text To Speech
| Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech done by a computer. It is done by accessing a database of recorded speech in the form of sentences or individual words. Text to speech is often used by visually impaired people in order to comprehend a piece of text without any vision. The technology is also often used by dyslexic people who struggle to read without any help. A speech synthesizer is graded based on how clear and fluent sounding its speech is. Many of the current day speech synthesizers sound very robotic but with advances in computing technology a more human sounding synthesizer is in the near future. Some people learn best visually, kinesthetically as well as many other ways, auditory learners can take advantage of text to speech technology to further their educations.(1) |
Speech To Text
| Speech to text is technology that allows for human speech to be comprehended and collected by a piece of artificial intelligence. The first speech recognition, known as "Audrey" was developed in 1952 by Bell Laboratories. The device was solely capable of understanding digits. Ten years later, IBM created the "Shoebox" capable of understanding 16 words spoken in english. Throughout the years, advances in the technology were developed all over the world, and currently software like Amazon's "Alexa" and Apple's "Siri" are capable of understanding tens of thousands of words and have advanced conversations in real time. Some newer technology like the ILI provides instant translation between languages allowing for conversation between two people from different parts of the world. The technology allows writing for visually impaired people who wouldn't otherwise be able to, whether it be a text, email or document, speech to text is a major part of computer accessibility. (2) |
|
Font Control
| Technology like OpenDyslexic helps Dyslexic people read webpages easier. OpenDyslexic removes all fonts from web page and replaces them with a much simpler easier to read font. Fonts have a heavy weighted bottom so readers can decipher what part of a letter is up or down. This software is available as an extension for your search engine and comes completely free.(3) |
|
Examples of this software include: | |
Ergonomic Keyboard
| Ergonomic keyboards come in all shapes and sizes and are very helpful for people living with muscular dystrophy and carpal tunnel syndrome that may struggle with a regular keyboard. Ergonomic keyboards vary from different switches, layouts and key sensitivity. These keyboards can be very pricey ranging from $200-$2000+.(4) |
|
