Exploring the use of synthetic speech by blind and partially sighted people

There are various ways in which blind and partially sighted people access information. For example, some use large or modified print materials, some use braille and some use audio information. Traditionally, audio information has consisted of having information read out by another person - either live, or on a recording - but developments in technology have led to an alternative. Synthetic speech - which is artificial human speech - can be produced in a number of ways and used for a wide range of applications. These range from talking devices which use simple pre-recordings of a limited range of human speech to "text-to-speech" (TTS) synthesisers which use algorithms to convert any text input into a speech waveform, therefore have an unlimited vocabulary