![]() ![]() Speak the following out loud to yourself in your natural tone, “I enjoy a very nice, warm, and sunny day!” Now, try speaking the same sentence extremely enthusiastically as if you were reading a storybook to a child. To listen at these high rates, it wasn’t possible (until recently) for a synthesizer to sound human and speak fast. Hawking uses? Many people who are blind listen at extremely fast rates. Now that you understand that it is really the synthesizer speaking, why do they sound so robotic like the one Dr. Why are those darn synthesizers so robotic? Instead, it is really the synthesizer’s voice. So, just as it is not “Stephen Hawking’s voice” it’s not the screen reader’s voice, either. They would determine what items to speak and then pass it on to the synthesizer, which actually speaks the content. As multi-channel sound cards became standard on computers and processing power became faster, it was possible to use a software synthesizer instead of a hardware synthesizer.ĭespite the synthesizer now being inside the computer as a software component, the premise remained the same for screen readers. Fast forward a few years as technology evolved and the synthesizer that was previously on a separate hardware device made its way into software. A screen reader was installed on the system, and it took the information from the screen and sent it to the synthesizer, which spoke the data the screen reader passed to it. In the latter part of the twentieth century, synthesizers were a separate hardware device that a user would connect to a computer usually via a serial port. ![]() Some of the first synthesizers were completely separate from a computer, such as the Voice Operation DemonstratER (VODER) from 1939. To produce speech way back in the day just after dinosaurs became extinct, speech synthesizers were created. Synthesizer History Classĭon’t worry – there won’t be a quiz on dates. But, in yesteryear, this was commonplace. In this day and age where our devices can do almost anything, we take this type of functionality for granted. Most systems could only beep or make one sound at a time, making it impossible to have speech and play another sound simultaneously. If you were extremely lucky (and probably extremely wealthy), you had a sound card that could play two things at the same time, called a multi-channel sound card. If you were lucky, your machine had a sound card. Of course, that’s assuming they could even produce a sound at all. A long time ago in a land far, far away, computers could not produce more than one sound at a time. So, who or what is behind the voice? Let’s take a trek through the history of synthesized speech and find out. I’ve even heard assistive technology users discuss it in this manner. To think so is a misnomer that has long been portrayed by people both in and outside of the assistive technology world. Often, I will hear people say something like “the JAWS voice”, “the Window-Eyes voice”, “the VoiceOver voice”, or “the NVDA voice.” However, the reality is that none of the screen readers has its own synthesizer. It’s the synthesizer used by his assistive technology. Notice that I didn’t call it “Stephen Hawking’s voice.” This is because it’s not really Dr. And, if you’re a developer how much do you worry about that voice? Should you even care at all? The answer is yes! Hawking, you are familiar with the robotic voice that he uses to communicate. ![]() It is one of the most popular shows on American television and people who weren’t familiar with Stephen Hawking have now been exposed to him. There’s just nothing like watching fictional genius, Sheldon, go against real-life genius, Stephen, in a game of Words with Friends on Facebook. Some of my favorite episodes have been when Stephen Hawking has guest-starred on the show. The guys are often arguing about some nerdy topic like Star Trek, the space-time continuum, or String Theory. I’m such a geek that I just love watching The Big Bang Theory on TV. ![]()
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