TTS from web content?

• From: David Bolter <david.bolter@gmail.com>
• Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:22:17 -0400
• To: wai-xtech@w3.org
• Message-ID: <4C6D4C29.7030400@gmail.com>

  Hi all,

What do you think about having browsers provide built-in text-to-speech 
capability to web content? While I imagine a declarative approach might 
be quite interesting I think we can go farther faster with a JavaScript 
API approach. The main two concerns I have are:

1. We don't want to encourage unpolished aural interfaces.
2. We don't want to conflict with traditional screen readers.

The biggest potential I see is:

1. Innovation in Aural interfaces. The same kind of innovation we see 
happening in visual DHTML interfaces.
2. TTS solutions in places, and on devices where traditional screen 
readers are problematic. For example, perhaps on some mobile devices 
that are currently not accessible.
3. The TTS can be done in the browser, on the native platform (e.g. 
Voice Over on OSX), or 'in the cloud'. We just need to get the API right.

Are we ready? Please speak up.

cheers,
David

Received on Thursday, 19 August 2010 15:22:51 UTC