Hands-free internet browsing is here

Speech Central is an app that uses text to speech technology to allow users to use the internet and read online, handsfree.

Text To Speech (TTS) enables the “reading” of a variety of dynamic sources such as databases, e-mails, news articles and SMS, converting it to natural, human-sounding speech output, ideal for dynamic and rapidly changing content. It differs to Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) which is used for building speech-driven user interfaces. In August, we covered this startup making comic books available to the blind using TTS.

Using TTS technology, Speech Central is a new app that allows internet browsers to read content from the internet with the screen off. Using headphones or Bluetooth hands-free, the app can read aloud and receive commands for interactive browsing, consuming significantly less battery and data. The technology supports any website formatted with headlines or an RSS feed and is compatible with all web browsers. Users are not limited to online content but can import various text file formats including pdfs, word documents and ebooks. The Serbian innovation also includes some interesting archiving tools: articles are always available offline and powerful filtering features mean listeners can easily search the material they’ve covered. In addition, annotation features mean users can favorite items or bookmark important paragraphs. The software can automatically detect 13 languages but can be used with any of the 27 languages supported for text to speech by iOS.

Speech Central is currently available for download, with free users limited by the number of items they can add. Could this technology become integrated more widely?