# Introduction

TextAloud is designed as a simple text-to-speech reading app. It was primarily intended as an alternative to the excellent "[WordTalk](https://www.wordtalk.org.uk/)" from CALL Scotland. WordTalk plays out loud your word document - either word by word, sentence by sentence or paragraph by paragraph and has keyboard shortcuts. For some people who use AAC, it is the preferred way of giving a presentation as it means you can read a paragraph or sentence at a time. It feels more natural. 

[Ace centre](https://acecentre.org.uk) worked with a few users to develop this minimal app for the required features. 

**What it does do:**

* [x] Reads out loud sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph or word by word
* [x] Keyboard shortcuts for an external keyboard are supported
* [x] You can import a docx file - but it's far more reliable to import a txt, rtf or pdf file. 
* [x] You can use "neural" voices from Microsoft Azure which - to some ears - sound more natural when reading large streams of text. **BUT THESE VOICES ARE ONLINE ONLY**
* [x] It also supports more languages than offline-only voices. 
* [x] You can write in any keyboard language - and it detects if it is a Right to left or Left to Right language.
* [x] It's designed first and foremost for *playing* rather than *writing* text. As such you have to save - then play your text.
* [x] You can switch languages easily between 1 or more languages with one tap

**What it doesn't do (yet - but planned):**

* [ ] We want people to mark up their long text simply by adding markers like you would in a text editor - but this time for things like "Emphasis" or "Tone". We think this would help people get their point across well. 
* [ ] Support more than Azure online voices (eg. Google Cloud, IBM Watson, Amazon Polly)
* [ ] Support offline voices (e.g. Acapella, Cereproc)

#### What we aren't rushing to fix

Remember, our focus is "playing" not editing text. So you can't save your edits in a separate file or files. It will save the state of your document between sessions but not if you press delete - or add a new document. You must edit -> Select all -> copy and paste it elsewhere if you want to do this. 

We also have no immediate fix to play text in edit mode. We feel other apps are better suited to this

{% hint style="info" %}
Want to see a feature or help its development? Please consider donating to us. We are a charity - all proceeds will go to its future development
{% endhint %}

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