ReadTheWords.com - Text-To-Speech

Famous Persons with Learning Disabilities Quote


"I, myself, was always recognized... as the "slow one" in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was an extraordinarily bad speller."

See the reveal of the above quote at the end of this blog entry.

ReadTheWords.com

I am always on the lookout for good online Text to Speech Technology (TTS) to assist students with reading disabilities. I located ReadTheWords.com while searching on Go2Web20Web 20.net(a great directory for interactive websites). ReadtheWords.com is a free, web-based service that allows users to generate an audio file from almost any written material. The service offers many options to input text to be read including:

• Upload MS Word


• Upload Adobe PDF


• Upload HTML File


• Write Text Content


• Cut and Paste Text


• Input Website Address


• Input RSS Feeds URL
  

Listening options include:

• Listen to your reading online


• Download to ipod or other mp3 player


• Broadcast as a podcast


• Post on a website or blog

The program offers 15 voices to sample and select before creating the reading. The site boasts that their readers can generate 1 hours worth of reading in less than 1 minute. There is also an option where you can receive the reading via email. You can set up a free account in less than a minute with the promise that your registration information will not be shared.

Famous Person with Learning Disabilities Revealed:

"I, myself, was always recognized... as the "slow one" in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was an extraordinarily bad speller...

...and have remained so until this day."---Agatha Christie

Play online games based on Agatha Christie novels at Casual Game Guides:

And Then There Were None

Death on the Nile

Peril at End House

Faking It

" Until I began to acknowledge my weaknesses, I did not realize I had so many strengths. As I better understand my learning disabilities, it is easier to reassure myself that I truly am not stupid, and, in fact, have some really strong abilities."

Christopher Lee offers a view into his world as a person with a learning disability in his book Faking It. I recommend this book to teachers and parents of students with special learning needs. You can also view his video which shows Lee’s devotion to helping students with learning disabilities using technology.

Speech Recognition Software

Famous Person with Learning Disabilities Quote:

"I'm dyslexic, quite seriously dyslexic -

I still have trouble reading – so I hated school. It was the worst period of my whole life, the first 12 years of growing up". –

See the reveal at the end of this day's blog

Speech Recognition Software

I am currently using speech-to-text software with a student who has dysgraphia and difficulty using a keyboard. Through his Individual Education Plan (IEP), he was assigned a laptop for school and home with software including the speech recognition program Dragon Naturally Speaking. He is now more independent in his class work completion and he is also in the process of writing the next screen play to rival “Star Wars”.

Dragon Naturally Speaking

Here is a website that provides a video demonstration of the speech-to-text software program, Dragon Naturally Speaking at Nuance Communications, Inc.

Famous Person with Learning Disabilities Quote Reveal:

Robert Rauschenberf

Described as "The greatest living painter