Technology in Art And Education

WordTalk - A free text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word. For people with reading and writing difficulties, having text reinforced by hearing it read aloud can be very useful.

 

Do you and/or your learners proof read their work?

 

When producing documents,I always read the text out loud and, quite often, recorded it at the same time, using Audacity.

 

That way I spot mistakes that my eyes often miss and I also have the text in a format many learners/colleagues preferred (Audio/mp3 files)

 

Many people wouldn't be comfortable doing that and prefer text to speech tools.

 

There are plenty of add-ons to do this task in a browser, but for desktop programs like Microsoft Word, they are a little harder to come by.

 

WordTalk is an example of a text-to-speech plug-in for Microsoft Word, and best of all, it’s completely free.

 

WordTalk has all the features users need from a text-to-speech program.

 

As the text is read, the text is highlighted making it easier to follow along with the audio.

 

Users can...

- change the colour of the highlight to match their preferences.

- change the speed at which the program reads the text.

- also save the speech for listening to later (WAV or MP3)

Via John Dalziel

Closed Captions are subtitles for videos which are useful for people who...
- want to translate their videos into different languages or
- are trying to reach out to the hearing impaired.

 

For those who want captions or subtitles on their videos, Google allows them to add subtitle files to videos on Google+.

 

The subtitle files that Google+ currently supports are SRT and SUB files.

 

This CPD post shows readers how to...
- create the files that hold text information that, in turn, enables the video to determine what subtitles to show at certain points of the video.
- add those captions to the video.

Via John Dalziel