ReadSpeaker, with head office in the Netherlands and business & product development in Sweden, has sales offices in six different countries. The company offers web-based speech-enabling applications to enhance the user experience or increase the accessibility to web content for everybody that rather listens than reads.
ReadSpeaker uses Acapela TTS in their applications.
The ReadSpeaker solution is available in different versions, adapted to companies and organisations of different sizes.
More than 2000 customers have entrusted ReadSpeaker to voice enable their web sites.
One of them is the Swedish daily paper Upsala Nya Tidning, who was the first daily in Sweden to voice enable their web site. Today the visitors of www.unt.se can choose between a female and a male voice to listen to a specific article. In an article in UNT, the editor in chief, Carl-Åke Eriksson, says that this service gives a freedom of choice to the visitors.
For some people the voice service is a necessity, whereas other people find it convenient to be able to listen to the paper while doing something else.
ReadSpeaker Success Stories
- The French Presidency speaks Acapela.
- Readspeaker's voice-on-the-web services spread on the web.
- Acapela speech-enables Readspeaker ''voice-on-the-web'' services for prestigious customers.
The French Presidency speaks Acapela.
ReadSpeaker, leading European provider of voice-on-the-web services, has recently deployed its services on the website of the Office of the French President - also known as the Elysée. All visitors to the website can now access the information of the Elysée's site read out loud by the natural voice of Acapela's High Quality speech synthesis.
A new law, voted in February 2005, requires all the websites of civil services or similar activities to comply with the basic rules of accessibility, and should therefore be made accessible to the disabled, and in particular the visually impaired. With ReadSpeaker's application, visitors can now choose to listen to the information on the site, by simply clicking on the "listen" button on the pages of www.elysee.fr
"The Elysée's website, the first european site to use our services, appreciates the growing importance of website vocalisation. The high quality and the natural sound of Acapela's synthesis are key features in ReadSpeaker's deployments." Says Roy Lindermann, CEO of ReadSpeaker France.
ReadSpeaker's technology is available on Internet (even with a low speed connection) and requires no installation, whether on the user's computer or on the website's server. The information is read out loud and clear by the extremely natural voice of Acapela's High Quality Text To Speech, in real time.
Readspeaker's voice-on-the-web services spread on the web.
Readspeaker, a leader in voice-on-the-web services in Europe, is equipping more and more websites with Acapela's text-to-speech technology.
The latest websites that are now speaking out are the district of Grand Chalon, and Terre-net, the first French agricultural news website, with over 2 million pages viewed per month.
The district of Grand Chalon (http://www.legrandchalon.fr), in the heart of the Bourgogne region, counts 108,000 inhabitants over 38 villages and towns. The district decided to speech-enable its website to make it more easily accessible to all as part of a global project. This precious service is based on a simple figure : 10% of the French population, roughly 6 million people, have sight-related problems. Beyond the concern of the visually impaired, Readspeaker also allows users to overcome obstacles such as illiteracy or language problems, and can also just make the interface more comfortable for the average user.
Terre-Net (http://www.terre-net.fr) had the same concerns when they decided to ease the access to the agricultural news on its site. Terre-Net is the first French portal to offer speech-enabled access to its content. Today, Terre-Net allows its visitors to listen, at the click of a button, to contents that can be updated up to 20 times a day. This is made possible by the speech synthesis which can read any written information in real time. "By vocalising the news articles on our site, we intend to show our engagement towards an information system that is accessible to the visually impaired." says Arnaud Romoli, CTO of Pole Terre-net Médias.
Readspeaker technology is a service available on the internet, even with a low-speed connection. It requires no installation, neither on the users computer, nor on the the site's server. The information is read aloud in real time with a very intelligible voice and incredibly natural voice, provided by Acapela's speech synthesis.
Grand Chalon district and Terre-Net join GlaxoSmithKlein laboratories, Sesam Vitale, Yanous! and the French National Assembly (on test untill end of 2004) who have already adopted Readspeaker's solution.
Acapela speech-enables Readspeaker ''voice-on-the-web'' services for prestigious customers.
ReadSpeaker develops and markets solutions to instantly convert website text content into speech, using Acapela high-end text to speech. This innovative service runs in ASP mode and has no impact on the website's host server. Since October 2004, the French branch of GlaxoSmithKline laboratories simplifies the access to its website www.gsk.fr. GlaxoSmithKline is the first private company in France, and first pharmaceutical laboratory, to adopt this vocal format on its website. Sesam Vitale, designer of the "Carte Vitale", the new French Health Insurance System smartcard, has also chosen ReadSpeaker technology to provide its users with enhanced comfort to information access, especially aimed to help people with special needs. Readspeaker has also concluded a partnership with www.yanous.com, the first French-speaking weekly Internet news bulletin dedicated to disabled people. A specific success story is devoted to Yanous! in this newsletter. From mid-October to the end of December 2004, the French National Assembly will be testing the Readspeaker technology on its www.assemblee-nationale.fr website, offering visitors to listen to some pages. Roy Lindermann, ReadSpeaker France General Manager, underlines: "We are convinced that website content vocalisation is a useful service for everybody because it offers comfortable access to information, reinforcing the text content." "ReadSepaker is one of the most brilliant vocal applications ever deployed on the market." insists Antoine Kauffeisen, Acapela GroupVP Marketing. "We actively support website vocalisation which will soon become a must-have service on the worldwide web".
Web page reading
Web pages can be reasily read out loud to the Internet users, to ease the content, protect the reader from long page reading and make the content of the website easy to access and enjoy. Speech solutions make reading simply natural.
Talking Web
Speech synthesis allows to vocalise any content featured on the webpages providing straightfoard access to information anyone, including Internet users living with sight difficulties, dyslexia or illetrism issues.
