Run the installer. Click through the options. At the end you can choose to run the applications - we recommend running these.

If you don't check these boxes - you can run them from your desktop or Start Menu. The applications you need to run are:

1. AACSpeakHelperServer - this runs in the background in your task bar

2. Configure AACSpeakHelper CLI - this allows you to configure the setup you need using a command-line interface

AACSpeakHelper is a small tool that enables you to\

• Take text written in a Windows AAC application

• If you need to - Translate it using a choice of online translation systems

It is good if you

• Want to set up a AAC system for someone speaking in a language not currently supported by solutions available

• If you have a client who wants to communicate to some people using a language they aren't familiar with. For example speaking to carers who are don't communicate using the communication aid users language or need to speak to family members who only speak in a language that they dont have a understanding of that written form

What its not good for

• Reading or saving long streams of text (eg reading a book aloud)

• If you want to use with a piece of software you cant copy the text from a message bar

• You really have to use iOS, Android or something else

Typical Use Cases

1. Language translation and speech output

Imagine you are a Kurdish speaker with limited English skills residing in a care facility. AAC Speak Helper bridges you and your caregivers, translating Kurdish text into English. Moreover, it supports people who need to speak languages less commonly supported by TTS technology.

1. Language not supported by current commercial solutions

If you speak Urdu - either as a bilingual speaker or as your primary language it can be difficult to find the perfect AAC system to meet your needs

Compatibility

AAC Speak Helper is a lightweight Windows executable. It can be called from any AAC app on Windows that can run external programs.

How it Works

AAC Speak Helper reads the text once the text is copied to the clipboard (using Ctrl+C). Depending on the configuration settings, it either translates the text using the selected service, speaks it aloud, or reads it. There are additional features, such as putting intonation (or style) onto some voices. We provide a CLI configuration tool to set up the application. The main application, though, has no interface.

After installation, you need to configure the application. There are two main ways to configure AACSpeakHelper:

1. CLI Configuration Tool - Use our command-line configuration tool Configure AACSpeakHelper CLI (recommended)

2. Manual Editing - Edit the settings file by hand using a text editor

Using the CLI Configuration Tool

The easiest way to configure AACSpeakHelper is using our CLI configuration tool. You can find Configure AACSpeakHelper CLI in your start menu after installation, or run it directly from the installation directory.

The CLI tool provides an interactive menu with the following options:

1. Configure TTS Engine - Set up your Text-to-Speech engine and voice

2. Configure Translation - Set up translation settings and language pairs

3. View Current Configuration - Review your current settings

4. Save and Exit - Save your changes and exit

5. Exit without Saving - Exit without saving changes

Configuring TTS Engine

When you select option 1, you'll be able to choose from several Text-to-Speech engines:

Available TTS Engines

Sherpa-ONNX (Recommended for most users)

• Offline TTS engine that works without internet

• Supports a large range of languages not supported by other systems

• Good balance of quality and performance

• No API keys required

Azure TTS (High quality, requires API key)

• Microsoft's cloud-based TTS service

• Excellent voice quality and natural speech

• Requires Azure Speech Services subscription and API key

• Supports many languages and voices

Google TTS (High quality, requires API key)

• Google's cloud-based TTS service

• High-quality voices with natural intonation

• Requires Google Cloud TTS API credentials

• Wide language support

Google Trans TTS (Free, limited quality)

• Free TTS using Google Translate

• No API key required but limited quality

• May have usage restrictions

Other Premium Engines Available:

• ElevenLabs - Premium quality voices, requires subscription

• PlayHT - High quality voices, requires subscription

• AWS Polly - Good quality, requires AWS account

• IBM Watson - Good quality, requires IBM Cloud account

• OpenAI TTS - High quality, requires OpenAI API key

TTS Configuration Options

When configuring a TTS engine, you'll be prompted for:

Voice ID - The specific voice to use (varies by engine and language)Rate - Speech speed (0 = normal, negative values = slower, positive = faster)Volume - Audio volume (100 = normal, 50 = quieter, 150 = louder)Save Audio File - Whether to save audio files to disk for caching and reuseBypass TTS - Skip text-to-speech entirely (useful for translation-only mode)

Configuring Translation

When you select option 2 from the main menu, you can configure translation settings:

Translation Providers

GoogleTranslator (Free, limited usage)

• Free translation service using Google Translate

• May have usage limits or temporary blocks with heavy use

• Good for testing and light usage

Microsoft Translator (Requires API key)

• High-quality translation service

• Requires Azure Translator subscription

• More reliable for production use

Other Translation Providers Available:

• DeepL (Premium quality, requires API key)

• Yandex Translator

• Baidu Translator

• LibreTranslate

• MyMemory Translator

Translation Settings

No Translate - Disable translation entirely if your text is already in the target languageStart Language - The language of your input text (e.g., "en" for English)End Language - The target language for translation (e.g., "ps" for Pashto)Replace Pasteboard - Whether to replace clipboard content with translated text

Manual Configuration

If you prefer to edit configuration files directly, you can manually edit the settings.cfg file.

Location of Settings File

For installed versions: Navigate to %AppData%\Ace Centre\AACSpeakHelper in File Explorer to find the settings.cfg file.

For development versions: The settings.cfg file is located in the project root directory.

Editing the Settings File

You can edit the configuration file using any plain text editor (Notepad, VS Code, etc.). The file uses INI format with sections and key-value pairs.

Example Configuration Structure

Using Custom Configuration Files

You can create multiple configuration files for different use cases:

Command Line Usage:

Distribution to End Users: You can create pre-configured settings files and distribute them to users. This is useful for organizations that want to deploy AACSpeakHelper with specific settings.

Configuration File Sections

[App] - Application settings

• collectstats - Whether to collect anonymous usage statistics

[translate] - Translation settings

• no_translate - Disable translation (True/False)

• start_lang - Source language code (e.g., "en")

• end_lang - Target language code (e.g., "ps")

• replace_pb - Replace clipboard content (True/False)

• provider - Translation provider name

[TTS] - Text-to-Speech settings

• engine - TTS engine name (e.g., "azureTTS", "Sherpa-ONNX")

• bypass_tts - Skip TTS entirely (True/False)

• save_audio_file - Cache audio files (True/False)

• rate - Speech rate (0 = normal)

• volume - Audio volume (100 = normal)

• voice_id - Voice identifier

Engine-specific sections (e.g., [azureTTS], [googleTTS])

• Contains API keys, credentials, and engine-specific settings

This tool supports a multitude of languages provided through Azure and Google Cloud. For a detailed list, please refer to the respective sections below.

WARNING

Please note. If you use any online TTS system, the data is sent to a server and sent back. These services do not store this data, but it is up to you to check this and how it may work against your own IG policy. The app does have a feature of 'caching' data, too - but this is not sent to Ace or anyone else. It's all on the device.

Languages by Azure

Languages by Azure (Online)

Languages by Google Cloud (Online)

Languages by Sherpa-Onnx (MMS)

Alternatively you will find the current most release on the Ace Centre Website

AACSpeakHelper ISNT a SAPI Speech engine. What this means is it is not seen by your AAC Software as a voice you would pick in your regular settings screen. We have to do some things to get this to work. And note you will have to be comfortable editing your software.

In short you need to:

• Add a button to copy the message bar (writing area)

• Then, have an action on this button to call the executable found at %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Programs\Ace Centre\AACSpeakHelper\client.exe (Note: You will need to browse for the app. You can paste this link into the file explorer but you need to find the exact path on your own computer)

• Then it's wise to wait around 4-10 seconds

• Clear the message bar

• Paste the returning text back if you are translating

You can test it by copying some text from a text file and running the app client.exe. Give it a go.

The Grid 3

We make things a little easier for the Grid as we provide an example pageset with the correct path to the application on your desktop under "Example pagesets". You can double click this and then try it out. Write some text - and then press on the flag icon

Tobii Dynavox Snap

Communicator

NuVoice

MindExpress

To-do

• It works on Python 3.10 or 3.11. The dependencies aren't well covered on all other versions (and there are a lot!)

Building the Application

Development Testing

Building for Windows

The app (client.exe) is designed to be called by a AAC application - and relies on some text being available in the copy buffer. You can use these parameters/flags to control aspects like which settings file is loaded or other aspects. Read below for all the flags.

General Usage

Options

Using the style flag for Azure voices

CLI Configuration Tool

The CLI Configuration Tool (Configure AACSpeakHelper CLI.exe or cli_config_creator.py in development) provides an interactive way to configure AACSpeakHelper.

Usage

Development:

Installed version: Run "Configure AACSpeakHelper CLI" from the Start Menu, or:

CLI Configuration Options

The CLI tool provides a menu-driven interface with these options:

1. Configure TTS Engine - Set up text-to-speech engines

   • Choose from Sherpa-ONNX, Azure TTS, Google TTS, and others

   • Configure voice settings, rate, volume

   • Set up API keys for cloud services

2. Configure Translation - Set up translation services

   • Choose translation provider (Google, Microsoft, DeepL, etc.)

   • Set source and target languages

   • Configure API credentials

3. View Current Configuration - Display current settings

4. Save and Exit - Save changes and exit

5. Exit without Saving - Exit without saving changes

Configuration File Management

The CLI tool automatically:

• Loads existing configuration from the default location

• Creates default configuration if none exists

• Supports custom configuration file paths with --config parameter

• Saves configuration in the appropriate location based on installation type

Blood, sweat and tears

We have

1. A pipe server (AACSpeakHelperServer.py)

   1. Reads in a config dict from settings.cfg

   2. Creates an object to the TTS Engine and holds it in memory to reduce coldstart time

   3. Speaks using sounddevice (heavily reliant on py3-tts-wrapper)

   4. Handles translation using various translation providers

   5. Communicates via named pipes with clients

2. Client - calling executable (client.py)

   1. You can pass it a config file path and text string

   2. If no text provided, it uses clipboard/pasteboard text

   3. Calls the pipe service to process text

   4. Supports command-line parameters for different configurations

3. CLI Configuration Tool (cli_config_creator.py)

   1. Interactive command-line interface for configuration

   2. Supports all TTS engines and translation providers

   3. Creates and manages settings.cfg files

   4. Replaces the unreliable GUI configuration tool

4. Additional Tools

   1. CreateGridset.py - Creates AAC communication grids

   2. migrate_settings.py - Migrates settings between versions

Configuration Architecture

The application uses a multi-layered configuration approach:

1. settings.cfg - Main configuration file in INI format

   • Contains all TTS engine settings, translation settings, and application preferences

   • Located in %AppData%\Ace Centre\AACSpeakHelper for installed versions

   • Can be customized and distributed to end users

2. config.enc - Encrypted configuration for sensitive data

   • Contains API keys and credentials for cloud services

   • Generated during build process from environment variables

   • Provides fallback credentials when user hasn't configured their own

3. Environment Variables (Development only)

   • Used during development via .envrc files

   • Automatically encrypted into config.enc during build process

4. Command-line Parameters

   • Allow specifying custom configuration files

   • Enable different configurations for different use cases

Technical Implementation

There is a lot of magic to make this work though. This includes

• QT/QT Threading. We had "fun" with threads. Never again will I do it like this

• Encryption in a github Action of keys and a hideous JSON file from Google. That wasted us a week.

Credits

• Will Wade (original v1, refactoring v2 several times, dealing with encryption, build scripts and generally pulling my hair out)

• Acer Jay Costillo (QT work and refactoring)

• Gavin Henderson - for making the call on baking in creds. I hated that and several times threw the idea out.

• Simon Poole - CTO at Smartbox for making me aware of MMS.

Whats next?

So we are not providing here software Gridsets/Pagesets of Keyboards for different languages.

If you want a client to write in the language of this TTS system (not use translate) You have to

• Find a keyboard layout the client is familar with in the correct script.

• Copy and paste the characters needed into a Gridset/Pageset that you need. Remember to not put spaces behind the characters

• This is painstaking. Please consider sharing your work so others can benefit.

Help! It doesnt say anything when I press the preview button!

• Have you just downloaded a new model? Give it a little while.. The pipe service doesnt report back when the model has downloaded and ready so the GUI tool just reports back ready. It should cue up your request though so it might take a little while

• Preview just says "Hello world" and runs client. If it is set to translate it may be sending the incorrect text. Try using translate and match the language you are trying to preview

Ummm its stopped working

• In the bottom right of the task bar you will find a small blue icon. Quit the AACSpeakHelper server and start it again. To do this navigate to %AppData%/Local/Programs/Ace Centre/AACSpeakHelper/ and double click on AACSpeakHelperServer.exe

• If it keeps happening send us the logs which are all plain text files %AppData%/Roaming/Ace Centre/AACSpeakHelper/

The translations are really bad - or have just stopped

• We default to using Google - the standard translate.google.com interface for this - not their paid for tier. Two problems with this: 1. Its rate limited. If you use it a lot rapidly it may stop for a short while. 2. The code we use to access this may have stopped working. Just let us know.

• Try changing translation providers. Some you will need to pay for but are likely to be better

Can I use this to batch-process a file of strings?

Sure. You may want to do this, for example, to create audio files for some phrases for a bilingual speaker. There are other tools to do this, but this is possible. You can just copy your text and run the main application - then look at the cache directory for the audio file. But if you want to automate this, check out this Powershell script

# Define the path to the text file and executable
$textFilePath = "C:\path\to\textfile.txt"
$executablePath = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ace Centre\TranslateAndTTS\translatepb.exe"
$outputFolder = "C:\path\to\output\folder"

# Check if text file exists
if (Test-Path $textFilePath) {
    # Read each line of the text file
    $lines = Get-Content $textFilePath

    # Iterate through each line
    foreach ($line in $lines) {
        # Copy the line to the clipboard
        $line | Set-Clipboard

        # Run the executable
        Start-Process $executablePath

        # Wait for the executable to complete and the file to be created (adjust time as needed)
        Start-Sleep -Seconds 5

        # Identify the latest created file in the output folder (assuming it's sorted by date)
        $latestFile = Get-ChildItem $outputFolder | Sort-Object LastWriteTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 1

        # Generate a unique truncated name based on the line from textFilePath
        $truncatedName = $line.Substring(0, [Math]::Min(10, $line.Length)) # Taking first 10 characters, adjust as needed

        # Rename the file
        Rename-Item -Path "$outputFolder\$($latestFile.Name)" -NewName "$truncatedName.txt" # Adjust extension if needed
    }
} else {
    Write-Host "Text file not found at $textFilePath"
}

When supporting people with a language not supported by AAC

• If it doesnt can we get by with recorded clips?

• Do we need symbol vocabulary or can they write?

• If they can write what script are they familar with (Hint: Ask them if they write in their language to their friends on their phone - if they use the standard latin (UK/US) keyboard they could be using transliteration. This is not bad - you will just have to test if your TTS engine works with that. And remember if you are going to do phrases you may want to use transliteration too if they are not familar with the written form )

First up, check the table below for Languages officially supported by the software you are using. You can also use this as a tool to find which apps support a language you are interested in. Be careful. Some languages write in different scripts. Check the script that the TTS engine expects.

MindExpress

RHVoice (SAPI)

SAPI - MSSpeech

anReader

Note:

• All versions of anReader 4.2.8 support both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows OS.

• It is recommended that Windows is updated and the latest system patches are installed.

• On Windows 10 and Windows 11, only the latest version of NVDA is currently supported, with other screen readers minor problems may occur in the operation of anReader.

Cereproc (SAPI)

Common Feature requests

• Offline Translation. Although possible with NLLB (Meta) its not easy to do all the language pairs we potentially need.

• The key feature is to make the integration easier. This is actually best done if it was a system wide voice rather than all software having to integrate different providers. So how do we do it? See our roadmap

• ElevenLabs access.

• Offline Azure/Google etc voices. Although advertised as kind of possible its not without limitations (notably not all voices are available like this from Microsoft and particularly not those that are of high need becauser we dont have much language support)

Azure TTS

Google Cloud TTS

Creating a service account for OAuth 2.0 involves generating credentials for a non-human user, often used in server-to-server interactions. Here's how you can create OAuth 2.0 credentials using a service account for Google APIs:

Create a Service Account:

2. Create a New Project: If you don't already have a project, create a new one in the developer console.

3. Enable APIs: Enable the APIs that your service account will be using. For example, if you're using Google Drive API, enable that API for your project.

4. Create a Service Account:

• In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to "IAM & Admin" > "Service accounts."

• Click on "Create Service Account."

• Enter a name for the service account and an optional description.

• Choose the role for the service account. This determines the permissions it will have.

• Click "Continue" to proceed.

1. Create and Download Credentials:

• On the next screen, you can grant the service account a role in your project. You can also skip this step and grant roles later.

• Click "Create Key" to create and download the JSON key file. This file contains the credentials for your service account.

• Keep this JSON file secure and do not expose it publicly.

1. Use the Service Account Credentials:

• In your code, load the credentials from the JSON key file. The credentials can be used to authenticate and access the APIs on behalf of the service account.

1. Grant Required Permissions:

• If you skipped assigning roles during the service account creation, you can now grant roles to the service account by navigating to "IAM & Admin" > "IAM" and adding the service account's email address with the appropriate roles.