RE: TTS from web content?

"I think this would be a great addition to the realm of existing assistive technologies. Having Javascript API access to the OS's built-in TTS would enable us to generate audio descriptions for videos directly from the web page in conjunction with ARIA live regions, for example. Such a capability should be togglable by the user and/or disabled if a screen reader is detected (although a shortcut key-based approach may be sufficient)."

	Agreed, it really would open up some terrific possibilities. Handling the relationship with screen readers will certainly be a challenge, as I can imagine times when both/neither would be desirable from the user's point of view.


Regards,
Léonie.

--
Nomensa - humanising technology

Léonie Watson            |  Director of Accessibility
t. +44 (0)117 929 7333    


-----Original Message-----
From: wai-xtech-request@w3.org [mailto:wai-xtech-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Victor Tsaran
Sent: 19 August 2010 22:27
To: David Bolter; wai-xtech@w3.org
Subject: RE: TTS from web content?

Hi David,
I think this would be a great addition to the realm of existing assistive technologies. Having Javascript API access to the OS's built-in TTS would enable us to generate audio descriptions for videos directly from the web page in conjunction with ARIA live regions, for example. Such a capability should be togglable by the user and/or disabled if a screen reader is detected (although a shortcut key-based approach may be sufficient). The power of this feature will depend on how many of OS's built-in TTS properties will be exposed by the browser to the Javascript developer, eg voice rate, tone, pitch, voice, person, volume etc.

Is Firefox going to be one such browser? :) Thanks, Victor

-----Original Message-----
From: wai-xtech-request@w3.org [mailto:wai-xtech-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of David Bolter
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 8:22 AM
To: wai-xtech@w3.org
Subject: TTS from web content?

  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 Friday, 20 August 2010 08:03:30 UTC