Re: Screen reader support for languages other thank English

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 05:22:17 +0200, Rebecca Cox <rebecca@signify.co.nz>  
wrote:

> Does anyone know what sort of support there is for languages other than
> English, using screen readers?
>
> I'm in New Zealand and am interested in whether there's any support for
> Māori - not sure this list is the best place to be asking about this!

(yes, Maori is a relatively old code, since it is an offical language in a  
country).

You may want to look at open source systems based on MBROLA / festival or  
similar if you want a Māori screen reader - I don't know if anyone has  
done the work but as I understand it Māori is written in a realtively  
phonetic manner, so shouldn't be all that difficult to work with for a  
voice developer.

There is a voice group at W3C, and a lot of the people in that are working  
in the area of speech synthesis. But I don't know in particular if there  
is anything currently available - presumably New Zealand and perhaps  
Hawaii would be the places to look around...

Windows has a whole lot of support for languages it handles well, but  
there are other screen readers for languages like japanese, arabic and  
hebrew that are little-known where people don't speak those languages  
much. (Those three also have, in varying degrees, some interesting  
complexities).

Finally, even where a system is available in multiple languages the  
versions may not be synchronised - for example you can use some screen  
reader version 27 in english, which includes the version 7 spanish engine,  
or you can get version 7 in spanish that incorporates the advanced english  
speech rules, or perhaps it is just sold as version 7 in spanish with the  
old version 7 english engine too...

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile                              chaals@opera.com
          hablo español - je parle français - jeg lærer norsk
   Here's one we prepared earlier:   http://www.opera.com/download

Received on Monday, 15 August 2005 11:37:01 UTC