Overtaking competitors

Primarily, it provides you with a whole new way of connecting to your target audience. The online market is a vast and complex spectrum that requires a certain level of differentiation in order to stand out. Over the years, we all have learned tips and tricks to differentiate and stand out in the crowd. For instance, the use of social media, investing in a SEO or SEA program, and/ or making sure your products are delivered quicker than those of your competitors. All of these are things you might want to exploit, or possibly already have. But now, we can add voice features to the list as well. Voice features are elements used to connect to your target audience in a unique fashion. So, if you want to stand out, use unique tools to do so. Use voice features!

Improving the user experience

Besides the fact that it’s good for creating a unique dimension in order to differentiate from competitors. Voice features are also used to improve the user experience. The user experience is the experience a potential customer has while navigating trough your website, ordering, and receiving your products (or services). If someone has had a good experience on your website, while ordering, and while receiving something, this user is bound to do it again.

Improving the user experience is all about making it easier for people to get where they want to go. Voice features can really help you with this process. It makes it easier for a prospect to follow the website’s content without having to read it. Therefore, it’s a great way to make it easier for a potential customer to place an order.

Helpfulness for visually challenged people

Along with this, there are also many people who suffer from a reduced eyesight. Of course, many things can lead to this. Whether it was caused by disease, inheritance or just plain old age, navigating trough a website can be quite a challenge for some who suffer from a reduces eyesight. Adding voice features to your website makes a huge difference in those people’s user experiences. Voice features are helpful tools for visually challenged people. And they therefore create retention of customers by improving the user experience.

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Nowadays, everybody that stands at the helm of a company, no matter the size, realizes that without a website, you are at a major disadvantage. We all know that the internet has gone through some extreme and rapid changes over the years and so it does still. Therefore, new methods are now necessary in order to gain some of that valuable online market share.

A new way to connect to your target audience!

The internet nowadays is a huge part of almost everyone’s lives. People spend many hours a day on the internet in one way or another. This means that they are exposed to many consumer spending variables every minute. Nowadays it’s not only a matter of being online and being active, it’s also a matter of connecting with your target audience in a sophisticated and effective way in order to get that online market share one desires.

Of course most of the companies realize this and many of these “connecting” tools are already used by most. Things like social media accounts are one way to really connect to potential customers on a personal level. This causes the effect of the humanization of a company, so potential customers see your business as an individual, rather than just another one of those big companies.

But as much as these tools are effective for connecting to your target audience, they are not really as effective for gaining that online market share. Because everyone uses this tool, the potential market share that you gain by doing this has leveled out over the years. Even though, connecting with your audience through social media is still an essential tool these days, the real online market share gain requires a more unique solution.

The voice activation of your website

One of these tools used for gaining online market share is the use of Responsive Voice. Responsive Voice is a system that enables your website to speak. So why do you want your website to speak? Well, for 2 main reasons. Many people in the world have a condition that leaves them with a diminished eyesight. Making sure the written content on your website is read out loud, helps people who suffer from such a condition to know what your product or service is about.

Plus, there is another reason to implement a text to speech function in your website. As you now know, it is important to connect with your target audience in a unique way to gain the online market share you want. Responsive Voice is such a unique way of connecting to your target audience. This opens up a whole new dimension of connecting to your potential buyers. Try it out now with a free trial!

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The biggest obstacle to building such a system thus far has been the speed of audio synthesis – previous approaches have taken minutes or hours to generate only a few seconds of speech. We solve this challenge and show that we can do audio synthesis in real-time, which amounts to an up to 400X speedup over previous WaveNet inference implementations. – Baidu

Deep Voice Tech Explained

Baidu’s Deep Voice technology uses deep-learning techniques to convert text to sound in all its processes. While other text-to-speech solutions and systems convert text to sound using complex processing pipelines that operate in multiple stages, Baidu’s Deep Voice is able to avoid a huge amount of processing and engineering. This renders Baidu’s solution more applicable to different problem domains in speech synthesis.

By using a neural network for each component, our system is simpler and more flexible than traditional text-to-speech systems, where each component requires laborious feature engineering and extensive domain expertise. – Deep Voice: Real-time Neural Text-to-Speech

The same technology is also able to smartly predict the duration and frequency of each phoneme in a word or sentence. With the ability to combine and switch phonemes and alter syllables, Deep Voice is capable of conveying different emotions in synthesized speech.

The advanced speech technology market is a billion dollar industry. With more relevant and practical use for education, accessibility, and for any device that is designed for convenience, text-to-speech is integral. It is not surprising that artificial intelligence is being deployed by giants like Google and Baidu (which is more dominant over Google in China) to make leaps and bounds with the text-to-speech market.

Let’s give this technology a few more years and we can finally have multiple options of realistic human voices to choose from in our devices.  We are excited to hear Deep Voice implementations in actual products soon. As of this time, our current devices are unable to handle Deep Voice’s requirements in processing data. All we can do is wait.

As a bonus: Baidu AI Team’s Andrew Ng’s TEDx interview is pretty impressive too! (the video is unrelated, however, he did talk about #AI in education and #gamification in this video):

Reach more audience! Add voice features to websites and apps across all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices. Try ResponsiveVoice — your effortless text-to-speech solution.

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Text-to-speech or TTS may have established its presence in the technology market as one of the most innovative platforms dedicated for assistive purposes.TTS is more and more being used in the education sector in which the technology is primarily utilized to assist the physically challenged with their learning. One example of a company dedicating its work to developing assistive learning tools for students with difficulties and disabilities is Spectronics. In an article published by the company on its website, Spectronics stated its mission to aid the learning institutions particularly educators in bridging the learning gap for the disabled learners.  In addition, the company believes that:

Classroom teachers support students with diverse abilities and needs, cultural backgrounds, experiences and learning styles. As teachers, we are required to make use of strategies and resources that engage, motivate and encourage active participation and learning by all students.

The authors, proposes that inclusive technologies being used for assistive learning should be highly integrated into the educational institution’s core learning concepts to accommodate the needs of students with disabilities and various difficulties.

Furthermore, the authors pointed out that, “Students with learning difficulties can be defined as students who experience particular difficulties in achieving at school that are not due to a disability or impairment. (Ashman, 2005; Westwood, 2003) Students with learning disabilities include those students with chronic academic problems. These students may have been diagnosed with dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalcula, disgraphia or other neurologically based conditions”. In this sense, the learning community recognizes the need for TTS-enabled learning tools such as OCR (optical character recognition), Talking Books, Softwares that convert text into audio, and writing tools such as onscreen word banks and portable note-takers. One of the reasons that writing should be also considered a fundamental part of the TTS-enabled technologies is that, “Common problems for students with learning difficulties and disabilities center around spelling, grammatical errors, tense and punctuation. They may have ideas, which they can articulate very well, but because of spelling problems fall back on using simple sentence construction and vocabulary. These students often need scaffolding to help organize and articulate their ideas into a written format” (Smith et al, 2017).

Inclusive technologies may be designed to remediate specific difficulties and contain key supportive features, while others have many features that support a range of learning needs. They may be standalone programs or may integrate with other commonly used applications. On the other hand, many of the technologies outlined in this article will not eliminate or fix learning difficulties. There is evidence, however, that such technologies can compensate the students’ disabilities and difficulties as well as assist students to develop skills to improve their literacy. They definitely allow teachers to encourage students to capitalize on their strengths and work towards independence and self-reliance.

Read More:
Inclusive Technologies Assisting Students with Learning Difficulties and Disabilities : Spectronics – Inclusive Learning Technologies

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According to the article by Alison Marcotte of the American Libraries website, a great number of patrons coming to New Jersey State Library are army veterans who are attending classes facilitated by TBBC to learn how to use assistive technologies in mobile devices such as Apple iPad. Among the number of trainings provided by TBBC is the effective use of TTS, which for an army vet like Bruce Greondyke is an important learning process to enable him to utilize mobile devices for daily activities. Marcotte also emphasized in her article the importance of state institutions in ensuring that everyone in the community has access to learning despite the disabilities. For Adam Szczepaniak, Deputy Director of TBBC, “Public libraries are learning centers for new technology”, which is a common vision shared by NJSL and the New Jersey Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

Furthermore, NSJL also emphasized that “These initiatives help boost that level of learning to include not only assistive software for those with vision impairments but training as well, which is in high demand by those who need assistance learning how to use an iPad, or who need help browsing the internet because their vision is changing.” Most of the services provided by the library under the TBBC program are geared towards the state’s aging population. According to Marcotte (2017), “the US Administration on Aging reports, the population 65 and older is expected to double by 2060. The leading causes of vision impairment in the US are age-related eye diseases, and the prevalence of these diseases is expected to double in the next three decades, according to National Eye Institute data. For example, macular degeneration, which currently affects just over 2 million US residents, is projected to affect more than 5 million by 2050”. In this sense, assistive technologies such as TTS can be considered as an evolving technology that creates a greater impact towards improving access to learning and inclusion.

Read more:
Bringing Assistive Technology to Patrons. 

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In the case of Alexa, Amazon has added Speechcons to its skills kit, which is made up of various words and phrases written in SSML or Speech Synthesis Markup language. Furthermore, Khari highlighted in his article that new SSML skills will enable Alexa to say more than 100 phrases, “like “Bada bing,” “Good grief,” or plain old “Boom” — to add more excitement and emotion to Alexa’s speech”. Amazon’s way of improving Alexa is to create a more organic AI voice that takes away its robotic nature. Other improvements integrated into Alexa include, “In recent months, Amazon has added other features to the Alexa Skills Kit to give developers more built-in tools. Last December, a library of hundreds of commands was added to the Alexa Skills Kit, making it easier for Alexa to talk about things like books, the weather, and local businesses”. Examples of the speech integrations added into Speechcons can be found on the solutions/Alexa page of developers.amazon.com.

Primarily, the objective of upgrading Alexa is to enable the AI voice to be more expressive by adding phrases such as “ahoy”, “argh”, “ba humbug”, “cowabunga”, and among others. The addition of the expressive phrases hopes to take away the monotonous quality of Alexa, which on the part of the users will enable them to have a more realistic experience of using Amazon’s TTS platform. Furthermore, Amazon’s objectives for upgrading Alexa is to enable her to be more responsive when talking about Amazon’s products and website features.

Aexa’s upgrade are not meant to only improve the user’s experience, but also introduce a TTS innovation that features an AI voice assistant that is smart, expressive, interactive, and engaging. In the coming updates, Amazon will continue to interject more improvements in Alexa’s skill box, which users can check out on the company’s developers’ website.  

Related Article:
Johnson, K. (n.d.). Amazon taps speech synthesis smarts to make Alexa’s voice more expressive.

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Phonemic awareness is one of the main challenges of people with learning/reading disabilities. In simple terms, phonemic awareness is knowing that words are made of sounds and the ability to hear and associate the sounds to what is written on the page. Phonemic awareness allows readers to identify the necessary print-sound relationship that leads to reading proficiency. This means associating oral phonemic awareness (sound) to the printed word. This is quite difficult to accomplish using normal text to speech technology because the spoken word is computer generated without the natural inflection and tone of human speech. More often than not, the robotic electronic voice of TTS makes reading uninteresting. It is a fact that the more readers enjoy a story, the more they will enjoy reading and the more proficient readers they become.

However, immersive reading platforms largely depend on humans recording the text of a book or a story to give it the depth and breadth of natural speech. This limits the availability of reading materials. The option would be to use a more developed speech synthesizer which mimics human speech. One of the more popular technologies being used is concatenative synthesis. This is done by getting chunks of human sounds and piecing them together to form sentences. Although the quality is much better than the basic text to speech programs, this is also limited because there’s no available database of all possible human sounds. The best technology by far is developed by Google Deep Mind, the WaveNet. As soon as it is commercially available, immersive reading can rise to a higher level.

Even with its limitation, the auditory reinforcement of an immersive reading platform provides a multisensory experience for the readers. The purpose is to immerse the reader in a story as it is narrated with real time highlighting. It caters to both visual and auditory learners and results in a deeper and longer-lasting learning. Aside from actors recording the book or story, impressive reading platforms can also include music and sound effects. The story becomes more alive and more engaging. The music and sound effects are just enhancements on the basic premise that reading the highlighted text aloud improves decoding and fluency of the reader. Immersive reading is a powerful tool to enhance the reading experience and provides an effective technology for educators in their commitment to improve reading proficiency of students especially those with learning/reading disabilities.

Reach more audience! Add voice features to websites across all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices. Try ResponsiveVoice — your effortless text-to-speech solution.

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The option then is to use parametric text to speech which doesn’t require a human recording the sounds. Codes are used to build a completely computer-generated voice which sounds robotic and stilted.

Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence or WaveNet offers a better option. It can now have the ability to produce some of the most realistic human voices. What it does is to model audio waveforms from actual human voices samples and create its own sounds capturing the subtleties of human speech. It might not be as realistic as an actual person speaking but so far, it is much better than the sound produced by other text-to-speech programs. WaveNet has provided samples of speech generated that almost mimics a real human voice which on its own are just sounds with no content. As explained in their paper, Wavenet: A Generative Model For Raw Audio:

Because the model is not conditioned on text, it generates non-existent but human language-like words in a smooth way with realistic sounding intonations… We observed that the model also picked up on other characteristics in the audio apart from the voice itself. For instance, it also mimicked the acoustics and recording quality, as well as the breathing and mouth movements of the speakers.

For it to become meaningful speech, linguistic rules and suggestions are applied to the results such as syntax and grammar.

WaveNet has also shown that other audio signals can be synthesized such as automatically generated piano music. This is less complicated than producing speech as real as a human voice speaking.

Blind tests conducted have proven that listeners rated WaveNet as the most realistic among text-to-speech programs. It has truly revolutionized text-to-speech programs. Before WaveNet, most computer gurus are of the opinion that the greatest challenge for text-to-speech development is to produce high quality synthesis. With the results from Google DeepMind, that challenge has been overcome.

Currently, WaveNet is still not available commercially because of its enormous computer power requirements. Nevertheless, no one will dispute it is ground-breaking. When the time comes that Google has successfully harnessed WaveNet and is able to make the technology available for servers and small devices, we would have realized the dream of being able to talk with machines.

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Assistive learning is not a new concept but the portability of devices that support assistive technology is relatively new. In the past, the big and clunky pieces of assistive technology devices drew attention to students with special needs and put emphasis on how different they are. Today, iPads, laptops and Chromebooks can support assistive learning. These are the same devices that are being used in traditional classrooms which add a “coolness” factor to both students with special needs and typical students.

Assistive learning technology makes it possible for all students to learn in one classroom at the same time. From a social point of view, this has a positive impact on students with special needs because the lines get blurred between them and their typically-abled peers. They feel a sense of belonging and inclusion. On the other side of the spectrum, typical students are exposed to their peers with special needs and give them an understanding of the differences between people which will be useful when they go out into the workplace.

Evidence shows that assistive technology has made remarkable inroads on how students view learning. For example, using an iPad gives children with autism control over their learning and prevents sensory overload. And for the typical students, assistive technology allows them to focus on mastering skills. However, an assistive device is just one aspect of effective assistive learning. Teachers must also evolve to keep up with technology.  Even with the available technology, the curriculum is still teacher-driven and when materials are not available, teachers will have to create them

Teachers at MS 88, a middle school located in Brooklyn, find Summit Basecamp software very useful. It is a free program aimed at helping public schools bring personalized learning into their classrooms. It lets teachers customize lessons and instructions according to the individual needs and interests of each student while letting students take charge of their own learning. With a wide varied selection of learning resources such as interactive exercises, educational videos and online texts, students have the ability to choose learning materials that best fit their needs.

The resulting independence of students using assistive learning technology doesn’t lessen the teachers’ involvement. On the contrary, it means an increased interaction between teachers and students. At its best, this new trend in education is a combination of online learning and face to face instruction.

There are still challenges that need to be overcome when using assistive learning technology but its ability to teach students with varied and different learning needs in one classroom whether they have a diagnosed disability or not is enough reason to continue and pursue using it. While it might have its limitation in terms of accessibility and learning equity, technology is a powerful tool in education.

If you are an app developer or web content owner who wishes to enable Text-to-speech, try ResponsiveVoice now! Effortlessly add ‘on-the-fly’ text-to-speech to your site or app, and save hours of needlessly creating and editing audio files, using quality computer voices.

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Here’s the way it works. The AVA app is downloaded and profiles created. Once everyone is onboard, participants will just talk near the microphones of their phone and the verbal conversations will be converted into a group text which anyone can reply to.  There might be pre-work needed but for the family, friends and colleagues of the deaf and hard-of-hearing, it’s the best way to include everyone in the conversation. AVA actually lives up to its commitment to allow those with hearing disabilities to communicate beyond barriers – it breaks the invisible wall and gives the deaf/hearing-impaired a sense of inclusion.

The potential of AVA goes beyond family conversations. It can be used in any situation where people are talking. In an environment like this, people with hearing impairments can only follow 20% of the conversation by reading lips. AVA with its current limitations will allow 80% accuracy.

AVA’s accuracy of converting speech to text is largely dependent on speech recognition technology being used. As we know, it is not perfect and has not advanced enough for wide-user adoption. Be that as it may, the app has a very simple interface and the set up process is quick and easy. Users have the option to sign-in depending on their hearing abilities and the app will adapt. It  is available on both iOS and Android.

AVA is aptly described as “a mobile application that transcribes speech into text. AVA, let’s you see in real time ‘who’ says ‘what’ around you!” Since the deaf and hearing-impaired cannot simultaneously read lips of multiple people, they are lost in the conversation. With AVA, they know who is saying what.

AVA is an application that meets the need of millions of people who have hearing problems. The app was purposely designed for non-tech users because hearing disabilities knows no demographics. It is randomly distributed. The founders always have these people in mind when they developed the app. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that one of the founders is deaf himself and another with deaf parents. This is one app with a heart solving a social problem and more importantly, giving autonomy to the deaf and the hearing-impaired.

Reach more audience! Add voice features to websites and apps across all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices. Try ResponsiveVoice — your effortless text-to-speech solution.

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