How does our text to speech online work
Customers sometimes ask us if our text to speech online solutions pre-record the audio version of the text that is speech-enabled. The answer is that our products don’t pre-record anything, the audio we generate is done on-the-fly. This enables ReadSpeaker to convert text into speech on any dynamic web site. We have different products, so I’ll discuss implementation of our most popular one, ReadSpeaker Embedded Highlighting. There are basically 3 steps:
- Add a short JavaScript to your website code
- Add our Listen button using the HTML code we provide. We include recommendations in our implementation instructions on how to place the listen button
- Define the reading area of your web site by either specifying the content to be read out using the HTML ID attribute or by using HTML start and stop comments
Apart from these 3 basic steps, we also include in our instructions a ready-made template for each of our text to speech online solutions which you can use on your web site to explain to your users how to use the listen function. We also provide information on how to name the mp3 file for users who want to save the mp3 file (for example if they don’t have flash) and other recommendations to customize the reading out loud of your web pages.
One you have implemented the above steps, the end-result is:
- The user visits your site
- He/she clicks on the listen button; ReadSpeaker detects the page/text
- ReadSpeaker collects the text and produces the speech
- …and sends the audio to the user
This process only takes a fraction of a second and doesn’t require the end user to download any software or plugin to be able to listen to your web site.
Product News: Our new Embedded Highlighting update
We have just launched a new release for our ReadSpeaker Expanding Player with Embedded Highlighting with some new exciting features:
- Extended iPad/iPhone/iPod touch support: When using the Embedded Highlighting add-on on Apple Mobile devices, your visitors can now use synchronized highlighting with our new HTML5 player. The player opens up directly on the page itself and doesn’t open up a new player page. This provides your users with an optimal display of the listen function on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
- Improved behavior when selecting text: When a user accesses your site from a computer web browser, selects text from a given web page, and then clicks on the nearby listen button which shows up, a new mini player will appear providing immediate access to the listen function.
- Hosted ReadSpeaker JavaScript: starting now, we will also be hosting the JavaScript that is a part of the implementation. This enables us to service you better in providing updates and continuous maintenance of the service. We have also introduced a continent load balancing infrastructure that is built to shorten response times and give even better availability of our services.
- Other features that come with the new Embedded Highlighting add-on are:
- Updated HTML code in the player which consists of 100% valid elements according to W3C’s recommendations.
- Improved highlighting engine which highlights words and/or sentences even better than in the previous version.
- Support for reading dynamic generated content, such as AJAX or Javascript, can easily be switched on.
- Auto detection and improved support for HTTPS web sites.
- Support for multiple players on the same page.
- More stable style sheets that do not conflict with websites’ existing CSS.
- New mechanisms that make it easier to customize default behaviour and appearance.
- A number of other improvements and bug fixes for added stability and robustness including full support for text selection in Internet Explorer 9
If you are already a customer for the ReadSpeaker Enterprise Expanding Player with Embedded Highlighting you will soon hear from our Support team. And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@readspeaker.com.
Embedded highlighting now available!
Following our PDF reading capability for ReadSpeaker proReader that we introduced on May 15, we are now very excited to announce the release of our new highly demanded “Embedded Highlighting” add-on for our ReadSpeaker Enterprise Expanding product. By simply clicking on the Listen button, the website user can see the synchronized highlighting of the text being read either on word by word and/or sentence basis. The user just needs to click on the settings link under the player to choose which highlighting option best suits his/her needs.
When a visitors first land on a web page with the Expanding player, this is what they typically see:
Listen button before it has been clicked on
Then, when the user clicks on the Listen button, the player appears and expands as follows:
Activated Listen button with expanded player
By then clicking on the Settings link, four synchronized highlighting options are available to the user:
Settings choices for synchronized highlighting
Here for example is how the synchronized highlighting looks when the “Word and Sentence” option has been chosen:
Synchronized highlighting of the text by word and sentence
Once the user has selected the synchronized highlighting of his/her choice, a cookie will enable the same setting when the user starts the ReadSpeaker Expaning Player service again.
We see the following advantages for web site owners who wish to propose this add-on to their visitors:
- Enhanced and better comprehension of the text being read out
- Immediate and exact vision on which part of the web page is being read out
- Choice of synchronized highlighting which best fits the user’s needs
And like with all our ReadSpeaker products, the user does not need to download and install special software to use our Expanding Player. In the case where the visitor uses a browser without support for Javascript and can’t play Flash content, we always make sure that the audio can be played so that the text can be read back.
Try the Embedded highlighting add-on now on our web site for example on the ReadSpeaker Enterprise Expanding page by clicking on the Listen button at the top of the page. Remember to click on the Settings link under the player to choose the highlighting option you want to activate.
We have gotten many requests from our different geographical markets and the various industries and services that we sell to regarding this add-on and have worked hard to make this happen. We are very enthusiastic on this new embedded highlighting feature and hope you enjoy it!
