This week, a colleague on a listserv was asking about AT software for Macs in a college setting. Specifically, he was asking about speech-to-text and text-to-speech programs. With a few cosmetic tweaks here and there, here's my response...
The built-in stuff
- VoiceOver is a screenreader built in to the operating system. Like most screenreaders, there's a lot to learn in using it. For help, check out a tutorial series.
- Speech is a built-in text-to-speech functionality that works really well in TextEdit, though also works in other Mac apps. Go to the TextEdit menu, choose Services, and then Start Speaking. You can customize this in System Preferences. You can also download a script that will make an iTunes-compatible audiobook from a text document.
- Voice control of your computer is also built in to the Mac with Speech Recognition. Lifehacker did a great guide to using Speech Recognition.
Other software
- MacSpeech Dictate is a speech-to-text program built on the Dragon engine. Works well, though not quite as fully functional as Dragon (yet - it just came out in April).
- Kurzweil's Mac flavor is as fully featured as the Windows program. It does have a problem reading color files that were generated on a Windows Kurzweil machine (ask me how I found this out!), though Kurzweil tells me they are working on this. However, it's got lovely iTunes integration, if you want to take your text on the road.
- GhostReader does a fantastic job of text-to-speech, with some really nice Acapela voices. Cheap, too, at around $30. I blogged GhostReader earlier, along with some other good, inexpensive Mac apps.
If you know of other good text-to-speech (and vice versa) apps for the Mac, yell 'em out in the comments!
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