Saturday, November 29, 2008

New tool converts blog text to audio for podcasts

From Mashable.com. The site has a 10-step method on how to convert text to speech.

Bloggers can now add text-to-speech capabilities to their site with new tools such as Odiogo, allowing readers to actually listen to blog posts on the website, and even on iTunes (as well as iPods and iPhones) as a podcast.

While this is a cool feature for readers, it could be a very valuable tool for the visually impaired. These tools also provide benefits to readers with learning disabilities like Dyslexia.

As a demonstration of how easy it is to setup this text-to-speech technology, we’ve actually gone ahead and helped Rachel from Why Not Rachel setup Odiogo for her blog. Why Rachel? Well, she’s legally blind and truly needed something like this so she and many of her subscribers could experience her posts in an audible manner. This means less strain and fatigue for the eyes and more accessibility as the posts can now be heard from mobile devices.