Text-to-speech technology has been broadly used to help people with voicedisabilities to overcome their difficulties. With text-to-speech, a persontypes at a keyboard, the text is synthesized, and the sound comes out throughthe computer speakers. In recent years, Voice over IP (VoIP) applications have become very popularand have been used by people worldwide. These applications allow people to talkfor free over the Internet and also to make traditional calls through thePublic-Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) at a small fraction of the costoffered by traditional phone companies. We have created a system, called EasyVoice, which integrates speechsynthesizers with VoIP applications. The result allows a person with motorimpairments and voice disabilities to talk with another person located anywherein the world. The benefits in this case are much stronger than the onesobtained by non-disabled people using VoIP applications. People with motorimpairments sometimes can hardly use a regular or mobile phone. Thus, theadvantage is not only the reduction in cost, but more important, the ability totalk at all.
展开▼