Text to speech - what works best?

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

Just need some feed-back from people in the know. Before I invest in any type of text-to-speech system, please let me know if you have had any experience (good or bad) with: Kurzweil 3000”, “Word Q” or the downloadable text-to-speech program from Microsoft.

This will be used by a 10 year old with multiple ld’s plus ADHD, so I need something that is user friendly that won’t cause more frustation during the learning stage!

Thank you.

Submitted by Sue on Tue, 10/04/2005 - 5:18 PM

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I’d take this question to the folks on the qiat list (www.qiat.org will have links to the archives of this group of folks knowledgeable about assistive technology). You’re right, you want to know more before you invest about what the stuff is like ‘in the trenches.’ Otherwise you’ll have an expensive machine, a frustrated student, and no progress… it happens all the time :-(

Submitted by Lupie Jori on Wed, 10/05/2005 - 2:36 AM

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I didn’t realize that wasn’t the type of question to ask here. Thanks for letting me know.

The archives are a little daunting, but I will take some time on the weekend to really see what it is all about.

Thanks again.

Submitted by Angela in CA on Wed, 10/05/2005 - 4:12 AM

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I am a big fan of Kurzweil, but I have been hesitant to spend that much money when I know my son just is not that into text to speech. So, I needed an inexpensive alternative for him to try and use and see how it could help him access text, especially, internet sites that are just to hard for him to read alone. So, I found Universal Reader at this website www.premier-programming.com and for $39.00 he has been able to access text and I have not gone broke with Kurzweil or Wynn. I have been happy with the programs Premiere offers and their tutorials are easy to follow.

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