Infovox iVox & VisioVoice

Reviewed by Wayne LeFevre

Infovox iVox

It all starts with the Infovox iVox. While not an application by it’s own right, it actually provides the voices that is used. It’s main function, really, is to install the voices used and process the licensing of those voices. There are two main qualities of voices used for the available languages. The first is HD, which uses a high density sampler for quick work that can take advantage of pitch, but isn’t very natural sounding. HQ is for high quality that cannot change pitch, but sounds very, very natural sounding.

Once installed, the iVox voices become available for use in every standard Mac application. The languages available are: Dutch, English, Flemish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. The love languages are particularly fluent and sound great!

You can select one of the iVox voices as your default system voice in the Text to Speech tab of the System Preferences' Speech pane. The Infovox iVox voices can also be used with Apple's VoiceOver screen reader for people with low vision, or as we are about to find out, VisioVoice.

Infovox iVox was developed by Acapela Group in collaboration with AssistiveWare. AssistiveWare provides the worldwide distribution of Infovox iVox.

VisioVoice

VisioVoice® is an application that enhances access to Mac OS X for blind and vision-impaired users. It adds multilingual support to Apple's excellent VoiceOver screen reader

technology for a number of languages, as well as providing several other speech and vision-related features to enhance access to Mac OS X. VisioVoice comes bundled with Infovox

iVox, but you can get Infovox iVox separately from VisioVoice.

There are many things that VisioVoice can assist with, and you can set it up all depending on your disability and what you would like to do with the program. In the Configuration Wizard, you may select to use VisioVoice as a text reader by a sighted person, use with VoiceOver by a blind person, and use without VoiceOver by a vision impaired person. You can always use the preferences to change exactly the way you want it to behave.

VisioVoice has two text readers. One for reading documents and one for reading the selection. By reading documents, you can open from VisioVoice any Word, HTML, PDF, RTF, or text document. This will extract the text into VisioVoice’s Reader, where you can Play, Rewind and Fast Forward as well as Stop and pause. The text being read will be highlighted as it reads along. There is no save function, however, in this window. You can though export the audio and save the speech as respectively and uncompressed AIFF file or as an iTunes track. You can read just a selection, if “Enable access for assistive devices” is turned on in the Universal Access panel of the System Preferences.

Vision Impairment Functions

VisioVoice has a number of features geared towards people with various degrees of vision impairments. It comes with an Image Enlarger, a Text Enlarger, a Talking Interface preference and large cursors. The Image Enlarger provides a zoomed view of the area around the cursor. The Text Enlarger shows a magnified view of the title or text of the interface element below the cursor or the focused interface element. When Talking Interface is on VisioVoice will speak the text associated with the interface element below the cursor or the focused interface element in case full keyboard access is used. In the Voice tab of the VisioVoice preferences you can indicate whether the interface element type should be spoken, whether VisioVoice should only speak when one or modifier keys are down (handy when you do not need the speech feedback all the time) and set a delay before VisioVoice should speak (so that it won't speak if you just move over an element. Options for the Enlarged Cursor can either be a region or a box that the Image Enlarger will show. There is the Target, which is like looking through a Scope, and there is the Cross–hair, the big + sign.

Summary

Though I don’t have much of a sight disability, yet, that can’t be corrected by glasses, I am glad that there is software out there that does what this combination can. The voices from Infovox iVox are top of the line, and VisioVoice brings them all together. Although a little pricey for play, it is well worth it for those who it is intended for.