Samuel Proulx

It really depends on your use case. If you want something that sounds pretty okay, and is decently fast, Piper fits the bill. However, this is just a command line TTS system; you’ll need to build all the supporting infrastructure if you want it to read audiobooks. https://github.com/rhasspy/piper

An extension for the free and open source NVDA screen reader to use piper lives here: https://github.com/mush42/piper-nvda

If you want something that can run in realtime, though sounds somewhat robotic, you want dectalk. This repo comes with libraries and dlls, as well as several sample applications. Note, however, that the licensing status of this code is…uh…dubious to say the least. Dectalk was abandonware for years, and the developer leaked the sourcecode on a mailing list in the 2000’s. However, ownership of the code was recently re-established, and Dectalk is now a commercial product once again. But the new owners haven’t come after the repo yet: https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk

If you want a robotic but realtime voice that’s fully FOSS with known licensing status, you want espeak-ng: https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng

If you want a fully fledged software application to read things to you, but don’t need a screen reader and don’t want to build scripts yourself, you want bookworm: https://github.com/blindpandas/bookworm

Note, however, that you should build bookworm from source. While the author accepts pull requests, because of his circumstances, he’s no longer able to build new releases: https://github.com/blindpandas/bookworm/discussions/224

If you are okay with using closed-source freeware, Balabolka is another way to go to get a full text to speech reader: https://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

Apparently! I don’t hide my data in any way, and constantly get ads in languages I don’t speak. Usually French, but sometimes Hindi or Chinese. And as a blind person myself, I’m not sure that my well paid full time job working in large enterprise and big tech accessibility is altruism deserving of thanks haha.

I assume it’s because I live in Canada, and big American data just assumes all Canadians speak French. I regularly get French ads on English websites.

I don’t block anything. I work in accessibility, so it’s important to me to know what the experiences are like for my fellow users with disabilities. I also don’t want to recommend sites or apps that are riddled with inaccessible ads. I’d rather not give them traffic at all. Though even though I let them track me, I still get ads in a language I don’t speak for cars I can’t drive. What’re they doing with all that data?

A couple reasons, I think:

1. AI dubbing: this makes it way easier for YouTube to add secondary dubbed tracks to videos in multiple languages. Based on the Google push to add AI into everything, including creating AI related OKR’s, that’s probably a primary driver. Multiple audio tracks is just needed infrastructure to add AI dubbing.

2. Audio description: Google is fighting enough antitrust related legal battles right now. The fact that YouTube doesn’t support audio description for those of us who are blind has been an issue for a long time, and now that basically every other video streaming service supports it, I suspect they’re starting to feel increased pressure to get on board. Once again, multiple audio tracks is needed infrastructure for offering audio description.

I run the RBlind.com Lemmy instance at Accuris Hosting. Decent Virtual Machines, easy IPV6 support, and everything works fine. Prices are a bit on the high end, but it’s worth it to me to use a provider located in my country, where I understand all of the associated laws and can pay in my own currency via my local bank. Also, I’d rather not give money to big tech if I can help it, and support local business instead. This isn’t sponsored or anything, I’m just a mostly contented customer.

Also, of course, the fact that the control panel is screen-reader accessible is super important to me, though I doubt anyone else cares. But unfortunately that’s not yet the case with most of the larger cloud providers like AWS. And if they do deploy an inaccessible update, the company is small enough that I can send an email and get an answer from a human who has actually read what I wrote, rather than a corporate AI.

I like lire. It works with any of the popular feed syncing services, self-hosted, cloud-hosted, or it can just run locally on your phone. Also, when full text extraction works, it’s a gamechanger. Unfortunately some websites (like bleeping computer) block it.