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PowerTalk
This is a recommended project.
PowerTalk automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows.
You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic 'Text To Speech' programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images. Speech is provided by the standard synthesised computer voices that are provided with Windows.
Latest release: PowerTalk 1.2.10
You must read the disclaimer before downloading.
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Download
PowerTalk
for
Windows
(2.8MB)
- Installer
-
Download
PowerTalk
for
Windows
(58kB)
- Source code
Added links to www.oatsoft.org
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Read more
- Aids you if you have difficulty speaking or you have an audience that contains people with sight problems (visual impairments, low vision or blind) or who have dyslexia;
- Helps you access presentations when there is no speaker and you are partially sighted;
- Creates engaging school activities such as reading stores created by students;
- Simple to use as you just select a presentation and it runs in PowerPoint as usual;
- Speaks the text on any presentation and uses standard Windows speech;
- Waits for text to appear and animation effects to play before speaking;
- Will speak hidden 'alternative text' for pictures, graphics shapes and text;
- Lets you add instant narration to presentations without the need to record speech;
- Is a useful tool for testing presentation accessibility when using a screen reader;
- Is mature with 1000s of downloads and several reviews from people who have found it useful;
- Free (gratis - as in 'free beer'). No purchase, registration or adverts, you just download and run it;
- Free (libre - as in 'free speech'). The Open Source License guarantees you the freedom to make copies and to alter its behaviour;
- Is listed on DMOZ and on Google web directories;
Find out more on the PowerTalk home page.
Re: Power Talk Problems
Posted by
Steve Lee
at
2008-10-03 17:47
Hi Kiran
There is one feature that may offer a work around for both questions - namely alt web text. If you right click and format object (exact details depend on version of PowerPoint), you can specify web alt text that gets read instead of the object text. Thus you could provide a version without brackets and with the missing data.
1) PowerTalk passes the text 'as is' to the speech processor and SAPI has no options that I can find to for this. In many cases brackets and other character are important so should be read.
2) We're at the mercy of what PowerPoint says is the next text to be read. If you send me an example I'll look to see if there is a solution. steve at fullmeasure dot co dot uk
There is one feature that may offer a work around for both questions - namely alt web text. If you right click and format object (exact details depend on version of PowerPoint), you can specify web alt text that gets read instead of the object text. Thus you could provide a version without brackets and with the missing data.
1) PowerTalk passes the text 'as is' to the speech processor and SAPI has no options that I can find to for this. In many cases brackets and other character are important so should be read.
2) We're at the mercy of what PowerPoint says is the next text to be read. If you send me an example I'll look to see if there is a solution. steve at fullmeasure dot co dot uk
Power Talk Problems
Following are the problems related to Powertalk.
1. Power Talk even reads brackets, like open left bracket, close right bracket etc.
2. It does not read data maintained in a group. That is an arrow attached to a box as a group, has data in the box. Powertalk does not read this data.
Is there any solution to overcome these problems.
Regards,
Kiran
(kiran_sk3@rediffmail.com)