Adding Content Options with Text to Speech

Universal Design for Learning recommends offering a choice for course content that you present. If you have a video, you should have a transcript or closed caption. For text-only files, you can provide an audio file, for example.  Here is an easy way to support your course with audio files.

Using Text-to-Speech

Text-to-speech creation example

I have found a very easy to use text-to-speech processor called Free TTS: Text to Mp3 with Natural Voices.  You paste in the text that you want to be converted, choose the language and voice style, and click Start. You will have to experiment with voice styles.

You click on the link to download the MP3 file.

With the free version, you can do 6,000 characters per week. You can purchase blocks of characters if you have a lot to do.

I also discovered that when I pasted text into the box, I had to ensure sentences were not running into each other.

The Free TTS site also has some codes that you can put into your block of text to control how some text will be sounded out such as ordinal numbers, dates, and emphasis.

Adding the File to Your Course

Once you have the MP3 file downloaded to your computer, you can then upload it to your Google Drive and share it in your course with a web link.

Here is a sample file for this text: Adding Content Options with Text to Speech

Stan Skrabut, Ed.D.

Stan is Director of Technology-Enhanced Instruction. He has over 20 years experience working as an instructional technologist and trainer. He has a master’s degree in computing technology in education and a doctorate in education specializing in instructional technology.

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