Adding speech as a service to a website, mobile site or app, is a decision that the content owner takes for several reasons such as:

• A new and easy way for their users to access online content
• An innovative way to interact with online text content
• Enhanced usability
• An easier access to text content for users with reading disabilities
• Corporate social responsibility
• Reaching out to a greater number of users
• Delivering audio information to multiple platforms and devices

Usage will vary depending on who the content owner targets, how the service is implemented and communicated about. In terms of implementation, many different parameters can be modified such as what part of the content should be read, the design and placement of the player, the speed, pitch, volume and order of reading, if the text should be highlighted while it is being read, and more. Content owners find it useful to be able to customize how they want the audio version of their online text to be played out.

Let us know what you are looking for when considering speech as a service for your online content.

Carlo Revelli, the founder of the leading French citizen and participatory journal AgoraVox shared some of his feedback on how he sees speech as a service.

Q. AgoraVox has speech-enabled its web site since a few years, why did you do this?

A. We wanted a simple solution for our web site users, notably those with reading disabilities. ReadSpeaker came across as the most useful web application, where visitors simply need to click on the listen buttons that go along with each of our articles to access the spoken version. Our users can also download the mp3 file to listen to our content at a later time or on mobile devices.

Q. A question we often get is how can this not be a pre-recorded voice? How would you explain that it isn’t to a prospective customer?

A. Well, the audio version is generated on-the-fly thanks to text to speech online which is near-to-human in quality. This is what makes ReadSpeaker so useful for a media site such as AgoraVox. Our contributors are constantly updating the site and the vocal version is generated dynamically in real-time.

Q. In terms of adding ReadSpeaker to your site, how difficult was it?

A. It’s as easy as adding a web analytics solution such as Google Analytics. You only need to tag your site with the code delivered by ReadSpeaker and off you go; you have a speaking web site! It takes half-a-day at the most.

This might sound like a shampoo & conditioner ad but it describes the “ReadSpeaker effect”. By adding a text-to-speech layer to your online content you are effectively providing an audio channel on top of your text content. Once you have ReadSpeaker on your web site, then you have an automatic and on-the-fly talking web site.

What are the advantages of providing an audio version of your online text content:

• Choice – you are providing a greater choice to your visitors on how they can consume your content.
• Equal access – you are reducing the digital divide by allowing users with different reading disabilities to access your  written content.
• Convenience – visitors to your web site or mobile app can listen while they are on the go, for example commuting to work, thereby making your content more convenient to access.
• Learning – if you propose content for learning purposes, having it in audio format reinforces the learning experience by enabling users to listen to your educational content on-the-fly or by saving the mp3 file for later consumption.
• Availability – an audio version of your web site or mobile app is always there for your visitors to use with the simple click & listen feature of our web based solutions.

Photo credit : takot

Being in contact with thousands of prospects and customers, we compiled some of the most frequent questions we get on speech as a service.

How does ReadSpeaker work?

This is a generic question that has multiple answers since ReadSpeaker has a variety of different online text to speech reading solutions. For our most used solutions which are for reading web pages out loud, ReadSpeaker is a hosted service which enables web site owners to tag their web site with our code. This is similar to tagging a web site with tracking code such as Google Analytics for example. Once our code has been implemented, end users simply click on the listen button to start enjoying the speech-enabled version of your web site or mobile app. ReadSpeaker uses the latest text to speech technologies to achieve this.

Do my users have to download anything to get ReadSpeaker to work?

No, your users do not have to download anything to be able to use ReadSpeaker. What the user needs is a computer or another device such as a smartphone with Internet connection to be able to listen to your content. The user simply clicks and listens to hear what you have to say.

Does ReadSpeaker work on HTTPS sites and password protected sites?

Yes, ReadSpeaker can be set up in such a way as to speech-enable secure sites and password protected sites.

I have a Content Management System (CMS). Can ReadSpeaker easily be integrated into our CMS?

Our customers work with dozens of different content management systems and have never encountered any particular problems integrating our code within their templates. For certain content management systems we have even developed plugins to facilitate even further the ease of implementation.

How many languages can I have my web site read in?

ReadSpeaker to date can speech-enable web sites and mobile apps in 35 languages and 88 voices since we have several female and male voices for most of the 35 languages. The underlying text of your web site must be in the language that you want to have it read out loud in.

What happens if some of my content is not well pronounced?

We can create customized dictionaries (some of our solutions have that per default) so as to take into account some words that are specific to your industry jargon and that are not well read. This sometimes happens with acronyms and abbreviations for example. We can then work on your customized dictionary to have your words pronounced correctly.

How do I know how many times users have listened to my web site or mobile app?

ReadSpeaker keeps track of how many times the listen button has been clicked on per day and on which pages of your web site or mobile app. You can view your statistics in your customer portal account on a per day or month basis.

Where do you suggest we put the listen button?

We recommend that our listen button should be close to the content and the heading so that there is an immediate mental link between the content that is read out and the listen button that is displayed.

Do we have to use your listen button?

For usability and awareness reasons we introduced a unified icon to identify that a web site is equipped with a ReadSpeaker web reading service. When website visitors see this icon, they learn what happens if the icon is clicked; the page will be read out loud to them. We propose a variety of buttons in the different languages we support and with many color and size options.  Of course you can also design and use your own button if ours doesn’t fit in with the look and feel of your site.

If you want to find out more about our speech as a service solutions, you can also contact us directly.

Software as a Service (SaaS) also known as software on demand is the type of distribution we have chosen since the beginning of ReadSpeaker to deliver our services. It’s really at the core of how we look at making our online text to speech services readily available to our customers in the easiest and most efficient way possible for them. In our case, the software component we deliver is how we convert different online text content found on web sites, mobile sites and apps into speech hence the Speech as a Service.

We have accumulated years of feedback from our customers on delivering speech as a service and here are the most valuable gains we see for them:

• Our customers don’t need to worry about client side installations.
• Our customers also don’t need to worry about local server installation.
• Maximum availability for their end-users who can access the online text to speech version of their web content from any device with an Internet connection.
• System maintenances are included in our services so there again our customers don’t need to worry about backups, updates, security issues.
• We can scale our operations to cope with increasing usage and demand peaks.
• Time to delivery is very quick so our customers can propose a talking version of their Internet content in a matter of hours.
• A subscription model with a fixed price level which facilitates budget planning.
• Agility and flexibility in proposing new features without the need to change the implementation.