Blog Entry #3: Text-To-Speech Programs

One great assistive learning tool for students who lack reading and writing skills or who are visual impaired in some way is text-to-speech programs. These programs, broadly speaking, are those that listen to a user's voice and transcribe it into written text. However, the technology has become expanded to much more than that over the years. Many programs, such as Intel Reader or Kurzweil 3000, have the ability to also read text out loud to students, change gender, pitch, and speed, support multiple languages, magnify text, and even spell and grammar check transcribed text, and the accuracy of these programs is getting better every year. Text-to-speech applications are a great way to give impaired children a leg up in the classroom and the integration of interactive technology can also be very fun for them, building their confidence in their reading and writing skills simultaneously. Students could easily say notes out loud and have them read back to them, or be able to learn proper pronunciation and grammar, they could have their textbooks read straight to them. Even children without disabilities could benefit from text-to-speech programs for their convenience and ease of use.