Re: TTS from web content?

We have a Voice Working Group within the W3C that has already done
quite a bit of work in this area, especially as regards delivering web
content by traditional telephone:

http://www.w3.org/Voice/

In fact, Jim Larson, Chair of this WG, recently approached PF about
working together to mount some content using their voice technology. We
discussed this briefly with great interest during our last WAI-CG.

So, I'm uncertain from David's post just what kind of delivery is
contemplated here. But, we certainly don't need to start from scratch to
implement something useful and soon.

I've cc'd Jim into this conversation.

Janina


David Bolter writes:
>  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

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
		sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net

Chair, Open Accessibility	janina@a11y.org	
Linux Foundation		http://a11y.org

Chair, Protocols & Formats
Web Accessibility Initiative	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Received on Thursday, 19 August 2010 20:59:58 UTC