Text to speech or the also called speech synthesis is the artificial production of a human voice. This technology has many applications such as improving accessibility for disabled people allowing visually impaired people or people with reading difficulties to listen to written works on a home computer, providing new services or even in the entertainment field.

Most of the modern computer systems have text to speech modules that allow text seen on the screen to be converted into speech. Apart from the personal computer operation system modules there are much software available so it is a matter of choice which one should be used.

Of course when making a choice the quality of the speech synthesis should be taken into account. The quality of text to speech conversion is estimated by its similarity to a human voice, and by its ability to be understood.

Modern computer operation systems

Apart for the text to speech modules that the modern computer operation systems have and the similar software available, there are many online text to speech resources. They are useful to people who are not able to use their home computer Text to speech or who do not have the required modules installed. Some of the online speech synthesis services are paid but there are some which are free or with free trials.

The online text to speech website has the same or even more options compared to the integrated services. You can choose the type of the voice - male or female and usually there is more than one voice available per gender. This is great as this way you can pick up the voice that you understand the best. The voice level and the speed of talking can also be adjusted.

The online text synthesis services also feature a variety of languages. Obviously the English language is the most popular but there are many websites that offer a vast variety of language options. This is great news so people of any nationality can benefit from the online services.

When choosing an online text to speech program you should check what it can read. Some programs can only read the text from the internet browser or the text from specific text processing programs such as Word. The best option is to get a program that reads from as many sources as possible. Some programs are able to perform dictionary look ups, have magnifying glass tool, translation tool. Some text to speech programs have the option to record the text read. This is a great option since all that is on the screen can be recorded in an MP3 format and listened later.