Text to Speech App: Voice Dream Reader

Voice Dream Reader can load and extract text from many sources and file formats. After extraction, Voice Dream performs additional processing to optimize the text for text-to-speech. Ads on web pages are stripped out, page numbers go away and strange characters are removed, so you can focus on what matters: the content.

A software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen. This interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device. Screen readers are a form of assistive technology (AT) potentially useful to people who are blind, visually impaired, illiterate or learning disabled, often in combination with other AT, such as screen magnifiers.

Listen to PDF and Word documents, eBooks, articles, and Web pages anywhere with offline text-to-speech. Built-in integration with Dropbox, Bookshare, Pocket, Instapaper, and Gutenberg makes it easy to import read material. Sophisticated controls, silky-smooth synchronized word highlighting and auto-scrolling puts you in charge of the listening experience. This app is fully accessible with VoiceOver.

Voices

Includes Heather, a fantastic female American English voice

Features 60 different voices in 20 languages from Acapela and NeoSpeech available through in-app purchase

Languages include:

English, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Catalan, Polish, Turkish, Greek, and Arabic.

Loading and Managing Reading Material

• Text extraction from PDF files
• eBooks in DRM-free ePub format
• Plain text, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, Apple Pages, RTF and HTML files
• Dropbox integration
• Bookshare and Gutenberg integration
• Pocket and Instapaper integration
• Built-in Web Browser to extract text from Web pages
• Copy-paste via clipboard
• Text editor
• Language translation through in-app purchases
• Folders for organizing content
• Export full text to clipboard, printer, email, and other apps
• Export highlighted text
• Open the original Web page in Safari

Voice Dream Reader Screenshot

• Play-Pause with remote control enabled
• Remembers where you stopped in each book or article
• Shows elapsed time and remaining time
• Sleep timer
• Previous and next book or article
• 30-second rewind and fast forward
• Full sentence rewind and fast forward
• Change reading speed on the fly. 50-500 words per minute
• Change voice on the fly
• Remembers the voice used for each item
• Playlist
• Continues reading when you lock the screen

Visual Interaction with Text

• Blazing fast vertical scrolling
• Synchronized word and line highlighting
• Full screen mode to hide the controls
• Focused Reading Mode with reduced text area and auto-scrolling
• Full-text search
• Table of content for ePub and DAISY books
• Bookmarking
• Sentence highlighting
• Customizable font and font size
• Includes Open-Dyslexia font
• Preset light and dark color theme, plus a fully customizable color theme
• Built-in dictionary

UPDATE: New features released on 5th June 2013 Include

Powerful New Controls for Speech

• Save speech rate for each article or book
• Adjust default speech rate, pitch and volume for each voice
• Personal pronunciation dictionary. Change how a word is pronounced or skip any text.

Configurable Text Navigation

• Option to scroll page by page for visual reading
• Footer to indicate page, percentage, chapter, and navigation unit
• Set rewind and fast forward navigation unit to sentence, paragraph, page, chapter, highlights, bookmarks, 15, 30, and 60 seconds

New Voices

• New Chinese and Japanese voices from NeoSpeech

Other UI Improvements

• Option to turn off word or line highlighting
• Sort by Date, Title, Author and Size for each folder
• Two finger double-tap on the text to play or pause
• Save the last visual location in addition to the speech cursor
• This is a fantastic product and one of the best, if not the best, in the Text to Speech category of assistive technology products.

Requirements:

Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is also optimized for iPhone 5.

Available for download from the Apple iTunes store at: https://itunes.apple.com/app/voice-dream-reader-text-to/id496177674

For further information visit www.voicedream.com