Tools for expressive text-to-speech markup
Erik Blankinship, Richard Beckwith · 2001
This paper describes handicapped accessible text-to-speech markup software developed for poetry and performance. Most text-to-speech software allows the user to select a voice, but provides no control over performance parameters such as rate, volume, and pitch. For users with vocal disabilities, the default “computer voice ” is often dreaded since it provides no personalization. Evolving standards exist for text-to-speech markup (Sable, Java Speech Markup Language, Spoken Text Markup Language), but few tools exist for non-experts to modify documents using these prosody options [1, 5]. Furthermore, we could find fewer tools allowing for straightforward live performance using a synthesized voice [3]. Thus we created an easy to learn text-to-speech markup tool that requires little training to use.