BlindSpeak: Text To Voice Email Service
BlindSpeak is a new text to voice email application that lets you convert text into speech and then forward it to any email address. The recipient will get both an MP3 file and a link to the online Flash player to play the message.
Currently users can send up to 5 messages a day. All created messages will be hosted on BlindSpeak for 30 day period and then deleted.
Features:
- Convert text to speech and send to any email address.
- Recipient gets both an MP3 file and a link to the flash player.
- Send at most 5 messages per day.
- Play and hear your messages before sending them.
- Messages are stored online for 30 Days.
- No registration needed.
- For similar apps see MakeUseOf’s text to speech section.
Check out BlindSpeak @ www.blindspeak.com (via webware)
Blindspeak does not work well with 2 screen readers – Window Eyes and System Access. I don’t know if Jaws works better or not. It appears that buttons are not labelled correctly, and in the case of the received message, the play button is invisible to the screen readers. There also may be a 5 message maximum per IP address. At present I’ve written to them to find out more. Seems that it is an amusing tool for the sighted to send, but the blind still cannot see.
it looks pretty good to me
Are you using it with a screen reader, and if so, what screen reader? Do all the buttons “speak” such as the Play button?
Hi Jamie.
I think you are talking about software for blind people.
I’m not sure about what type of readers it supports
The application is still in early development so this is might be one of the reasons you can not read using reader.
What I know is that the messages is send as MP3 file and recipient can easily play it on his computer based player.
I will send them an eMail and find out more.
(Comments wont nest below this level)Thanks Kaly,
Yes, all that software I was mentioning was screen reader software. The problem is that there was no way for the screen reader to see the play message button, so as it turns out, the mp3 cannot be played or heard by the blind person it was intended for. The message was just silent. Other buttons were “seen” by the screen reader, but not that one.
I’ve been wondering though – blind people need some kind of screen reader to operate computers in the first place. They speak whatever is going on in the computer, including reading the text in a message out loud. One might wonder what benefit the mp3 recording has over the screen reader reading the text file.
In the time it took for my husband to try to find the right button to push, he could have “read” a text message several times over with his screen reader, and would have moved on to the next.