User attitudes towards synthetic speech for talking books

RNIB's Talking Book service is considering the possibility of producing some Talking Books using synthetic speech. This study aimed to determine how acceptable this would be to users of the service. 48 respondents were involved in this study, through focus groups, structured interviews and online questionnaires. Overall, findings showed a wide range of opinion amongst respondents. Some were keen to try synthetic speech books, and reported various benefits to synthetic speech, whereas others felt using synthetic speech would spoil the experience of Talking Books and would not accept books in this way.