Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Add text-to-speech to your browser

vozMe lets you add a speech synthesis bookmarklet to your browser. Select any text as you browse, click the vozMe button in your browser and you will hear the text in a somewhat mechanical Irish accent (male voice). This is a great way to add accessibility to the browsing experience.  Putting the bookmarklet on your classroom computer browser 's menu bar means a student with some text challenges could have the page, or part of it, read to him/her. With some discrete earbuds, no one else needs to hear!

See this link to install the bookmarklet. (Choose from a female or a male voice.) The resulting mp3 can even be downloaded. The voice has a certain "Stephen Hawking" quality, but is sstill quite usable.