Affordable Text to Speech or Talking Book Software
Affordable text to speech software is generally better than most free versions because the affordable versions offer so many great features. On this page, you will note several excellent options of affordable text to speech software available at a reasonable price. ConfidentReader & Natural Reader (educational silver & gold version) offer free ebooks and a color changeable background. Some software programs such as Aurora Suite offer useful features such as a talking dictionary & spell check. Others text to speech software such as Speak out loud & FlameReader can easily convert your paper, text book, e-book, emails & more into an audio file (wave, Mp3). Go to the websites and check out the options and features available to suit your specific needs
NaturalReader
Education Gold
For PC & Mac
Gold version:$99.99 (comes with 1,000 free ebooks)
Silver version:$69.99 ( comes with 100 free ebooks)
http://www.naturalreaders.com/edu_gold.htm Introduce Education Gold to your child and help them understand and become proficient with the software. Spend time together on the Internet looking for eBooks, web sites, stories, and documents that are of interest to your child and then let Education Gold help open up their world. Using Education Gold routinely will help your child improve in reading, comprehension, spelling and overall self-confidence while reducing their reading frustrations.
ConfidentReader
Personal: $69.00
Professional edition: $99.00
http://www.confidentreader.com/ ConfidentReader is the assistive reading software designed to help people with dyslexia improve their reading and spelling skills. Hear It, See It, Read It: ConfidentReader turns written text into natural sounding human speech. You’ll find your comprehension and reading improves as you hear the material, simultaneously see the words highlight on your screen, and read along. This plays to your strengths to help you boost your performance. ConfidentReader can read electronic textbooks, PDF files, Microsoft WORD documents, and web pages.Type It, Hear It, Check It: Spelling is often a challenge for people with dyslexia. ConfidentReader can read text as you type, by word or by sentence. This delivers critical real-time feedback to help you improve your coordination of sounds and letter combinations.
1st Read It Aloud!
Windows
$19.95 USD
By Qwerty studios
http://www.qwertystudios.com/products/speaking-notepad/product.html/ Our kids frequently ask us to read something aloud. However, the adults often need somebody to read for them too. That is why 1st Read It Aloud! was created. Since now, you can listen to the text you want being read by the voice you prefer with the pitch and speed you’d like to. Just select some text from any application, press hot key and enjoy listening to the live voice reading your documents, readmes, notes, e-mails, web sites and a lot of other useful stuff. You even don’t need to copy desired text into clipboard! What can be easier? Just select and listen!
Speaking Notepad
By Qwerty studios
$29.95 USD
http://www.qwertystudios.com/products/speaking-notepad/ Speaking Notepad is handy text editor with powerful text-to-speech capabilities. Speaking Notepad will read your TXT, RTF, DOC, HTML and PDF documents with SAPI4 and SAPI5-compliant high quality voices, different speed and pitches, read clipboard content, record texts into WAV, MP3 and WMA files and even read every word or sentence you are typing. With powerful bookmark management system Speaking Notepad becomes an ideal solution for e-books reading.
EasyReader
Your dolphin
Price: $55.00
http://www.yourdolphin.com/productdetail.asp?id=9/ EasyReader is a software digital talking book player, allowing the user to read and listen to content through a combination of text, audio and images. One of the main advantages of using EasyReader is that the content becomes easy to navigate through, where a reader can skip through sections of their content and place bookmarks to highlight areas of interest. EasyReader is extremely easy-to-use, making reading an absolute pleasure.
TextAloud
Windows
Price: $29.95
Mega pack Price: $49.95
www.nextup.com/textaloud; TextAloud reads text from email, web pages, reports and more, aloud on your PC. TextAloud can also save your daily reading to MP3 or Windows Media files ready for playback on your iPod, PocketPC, or even on your TV with Tivo’s Home Media Option. Be more productive or just be entertained wherever you go with our text reader.
FlameReader
Windows
Standerd Version: $29.95
Premium: $49.95
http://www.flamereader.com/products.html/ FlameReader Software can convert any text into audible speech. Just highlight some text, click the Read button. and you can sit back and relax while your computer reads to you.Flame reader can;open Multiple Text Files,read Aloud Any Text in Your Computer, repeat Listening to a block of Text,Convert Text to MP3/WAVE Files, Batch Convert Text Files to Audio Files, Custimize Speaker, Speed and PitchTranslate 6 languages, Mouse Echo echos back Words or Lines, PowerReader Reads Text Directly in Applications, and more.
Power Text to Speech Reader
$29.95 , or Free version
Windows
http://www.1speechsoft.com/ Power Text to Speech Reader is an award-winning text-to-speech player that lets you listen to documents, e-mails or web pages instead of reading on screen,it uses voice synthesis to create spoken audio from text with natural voices. You can listen on your PC or save text to MP3 or wave files for listening later.
NaturalReader
PC or mac
$49.50 or Free version
http://www.naturalreaders.com/products.htm NaturalReader is Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy to use software can convert any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or iPod.
Merit Text Talker
$19.00
http://www.meritsoftware.com/text_talker/ : The Merit Text Talker, a new innovation, speaks text as it appears on the screen. Students experience the benefits of text-to-speech technology as a fully integrated part of Merit’s reading, grammar, and vocabulary programs.
Users have the option to hear the passages, questions, answers, tips and explanations that they view on the screen spoken aloud. Students may select as much text as they would like to hear voiced, and they can hear it repeated as many times as they wish. While the text is read, each word is highlighted for extra emphasis as it is pronounced.
Aurora Suite 2005
Value edition: $149
Standard edition: $349
Professional edition: $549
http://www.aurora-systems.com// Write Suitable for beginning, intermediate or advanced writers, Aurora’s word prediction is surprisingly effective as it helps with spelling, word choice and sentence construction. As you type, it applies advanced word prediction, grammatical, and phonetic algorithms to complete words and predict future words for you so you will be able to type correctly spelled words and phrases faster, or for a longer time with less effort. If you confuse homonyms, Aurora provides visual and aural cues as well as usage examples and definitions for over 2,100 homonyms. Aurora’s talking spellchecker helps even the most creative spellers and can correct common mistakes automatically. As you write, your words and sentences can be read back aloud so you can be sure that what you wrote is what you meant to.