Sveriges Television (SVT), the Swedish public service television company, offers since 2005 a service called 'Talking subtitles', which means that the viewer has the possibility to listen to the translated subtitles of a foreign language progamme.
The reading of the subtitles is done by Acapela's speech synthesis voices, the text to speech technology allowing to speech support any text input in real time, with natural voices for optimal comfort and entertainment of the viewer. The service is primarilytargeting people suffering from sight impairements or reading difficulties.
The viewer watching a tv programme can hear the original audio part in the original language at the same time as the translated subtitles are readout in a separate audio channel via the digital box. The viewer can connect an ear phone or a separate loud speaker to the digital box in order to listen to the reading of the subtitles.
The service is today available for all programmes, except the news, on the digital terrestrial TV broadcasts including the two channels SVT1 and SVT2.
The ambition of SVT is to extend the service also to the news as well as to digital sendings broadcasted via satellite or cable.
Quite unknown among people in general, the 'Talking subtitles' service is well known among people with sight impairements. The service is free to all users, the digital box remain the only cost.
For more information (only in Swedish), please visit
http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=22102&a=300533
http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=22102&a=300535
Reading Assistants
Speech synthesis allows to turn into speech any written infomation, providing the access to written information to people living with reading difficulties, such as sight impairments, dyslexia or illiteracy.
