Today making your content more accessible is key to growing a platform but why?
Over 1 billion people worldwide encounter barriers when trying to read and understand content online. And today, getting your content to reach everyone is really important, whether you have a business or are a content creator.
Failing to provide accessibility for those people can have a bad impact. This makes Inclusivity and accessibility essential.
The best way to reach these people is with text to speech. Converting text to audio allows easy access to digital content for those with visual impairment, caters to more audiences with language proficiency issues, to the growing aging population, and permits more flexibility for the content owner.
What’s text to speech?
Text-to-speech (TTS) is a type of assistive technology that reads digital text aloud. It’s sometimes called “read aloud” technology. This device is used by people of all ages and it also opens doors to anyone else looking for easier ways to access digital content.
With a click of a button or the touch of a finger, TTS can take words on a computer or other digital device and convert them into audio.
It works on almost all personal digital devices, including computers, smartphones, and tablets. All types of text files can be transcripted and read aloud, including Word documents, PDF files, and web pages.
This tool is helpful for things like learning to read, e-learning, lectures, YouTube videos, Tiktok, Instagram, Twitch, and Facebook, as well as improving the accessibility of a website.
If you’re trying to find the perfect TTS tool we recommend Woord
Why Woord?
Woord is a free online TTS that has a number of useful features. It is available in over 50 languages, including several English dialects, Portuguese dialects, and Spanish dialects. You can also select a male, female, or gender-neutral voice. All of these features are available for free, allowing you to test the service before investing in the premium version.
The free edition includes premium voices, a Chrome plugin, an SSML editor, an MP3 download, and up to 20,000 characters per month. You can also change the speed and format of the voice with this software.
Woord´s vocal characteristics allow you to use it in a variety of situations. You can use Woord´s Text-to-Speech (TTS) functionality to create applications that assist people with reading difficulties, such as those used in E-learning and education.
Woord, as previously mentioned, can be used to assist the blind and visually impaired in consuming digital information such as eBooks and newspapers, but it can also be used in a variety of devices such as set-top boxes, smartwatches, tablets, and smartphones.
How to use it?
Woord‘s interface is designed in a simple way to be intuitive for the user. With these simple steps you will be able to generate quality audio:
1- In the format you prefer, write or upload the content you want to convert to speech (it can be an image, PDF, text file, blog, or a variety of other formats).
2- Select the language, voice gender (male or female), and pace. (From within the PDF, you can also choose where to begin playing.)
3- You can listen to or download your audio recording as an MP3 file online.
Also published on Medium.