Text-to-speech goes Kannada The software is developed by a visually challenged computer programmer who wanted to help others like him Niranjan.Kaggere @timesgroup.com For thousands of visually challenged people across the state, a 25-year-old visually challenged computer programmer, Sridhar, has come as a blessing in disguise. Not only has he set up an NGO to help other visually challenged people, but also developed a technology to take computers a step closer to the visually impaired. He has developed a Kannada version of the text-to-speech technology through which any visually challenged person can read, write and work on computers. The Knowledge Commission of the state government has hosted his software, named e-speak in Kannada, on its Kannada Wikipedia website to facilitate other visually challenged people to use it free of cost. The software will convert the Kannada script on the Internet and on computers into sound and read it out for users. “I have been working on the development of this software for the last 2-3 years. I think it will be a boon for all the visually challenged people,” Sridhar told Bangalore Mirror. Born in the remote hamlet of Abashi in Soraba taluk of Shimoga district, Sridhar obtained a diploma in computer applications for visually challenged from a special polytechnic in Mysore. “Then itself I had decided to make a career in software programming and learnt basic programming on my own. All through my computer education, I used English e-speak software which is useful only to those who know English. Those who do not know English were deprived of a great knowledge pool,” he said. Determined to help fellow visually challenged people, he approached Jonathan Duddington who first developed text-to-speech software in English. “I emailed him and explained my wish of developing the same software in Kannada. While he had included several other languages of the world, he found Kannada to be difficult. He sent me all the basics of the module. I helped him add the dictionary and pronunciation parts of the software, including the correct form of phonemes and other grammatical and linguistic aspects,” he said. Sridhar tested it with his friends. “It turned out to be a great success among the visually challenged as they could work on computers. Several of them started writing articles and blogs besides reading letters and e-papers online. Then I decided to make this software available to all visually challenged people of the state. The Knowledge Commission came to my rescue by hosting the software on its Kannada wikipedia website Kanaja,” he said. The software is compatible with both Windows and Linux operating systems and can be used with any other screen reading application. As the software has included speech synthesis markup language (SSML), the pronunciation can be corrected at any time. As the voice is still in robotic form, Sridhar is working to make it more natural and also try to include the application in mobile phone handsets as well. Source: Bangalore Mirror, dated 15th July 2011
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