From Mathieu Paquette, Product Manager at Humanware: Quick poll - TTS (Text to Speech)

By TheBlindGuy07, 23 July, 2025

Forum
Assistive Technology

Hi,
I stumbled on this and thought applevis will be a great place to share this.
From the Tech VI groups.io mailing list who shared this from humanware, a survey about tts we used. For a strange reason nuance voices are not mentioned at all.
https://groups.io/g/tech-vi/topic/114294555
You don't have to own any of humanware devices or softwares to fill this out.

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Comments

By DeamonDavid on Wednesday, July 23, 2025 - 15:43

Lots of years Microsoft bought Nuance (sorry for not sharing a source right now).

I'd guess the reason not listing Nuance's voices is that Microsoft has stopped or highened the price so mmuch for licensing out the voices so it is too expensive that VFO don't wanna pay for them anymore.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Wednesday, July 23, 2025 - 21:56

Oh I completely ge that and am aware of all this. Just strange, in the community nuance voices are very iconic just because of apple and freedom scientific, it's almost impossible to not know them. That's why I find it strange.

By Brad on Thursday, July 24, 2025 - 05:55

I filled it out, I hope it helps.

By Brooke on Thursday, July 24, 2025 - 10:04

Just filled it out. I'm surprised there weren't more TTS choices on there.

By Ekaj on Thursday, July 24, 2025 - 19:13

I just tried clicking this link, and then downloading it and clicking it again but no go. It gives me a "content is empty" message. This sounds interesting though. I am the proud owner of one of the NLS HumanWare eReaders, and I used a Toshiba laptop back in high school which HumanWare modified with speech.

By jim pickens on Thursday, July 24, 2025 - 19:37

Filled it out as well

By Daniel Angus MacDonald on Friday, July 25, 2025 - 00:44

I filled out this survey. Eloqueence is my pick.

By Bingo Little on Monday, July 28, 2025 - 17:35

I didn't fill out the form. I filled it in instead. Was I meant to have filled it out?

I, too, was a mort surprised by the limited choices of voices. I went for Eloquence but with one very important caveat: it has to be british English Eloquence elsewise I'm not interested. Never got on with graham, Queen Elizabeth and all that nonsense, and as for DeckTalk it's a very good synthesiser but not available in the Bingo Locale, I believe.

By Missy Hoppe on Monday, July 28, 2025 - 21:05

I followed the link, but it informed me that the survey was no longer accepting responses. I've been using vocalizer Nathan for JAWS and on my iPhone for quite a while now. I would love it if JAWS could get updated voices; would love to use Evan, but he doesn't exist for JAWS. Even an update to Nathan with a few less pronunciation quirks would be seriously awesome. Now that realistic voices are responsive enough to be useable, I, personally have no interest in ever using something like Eloquence again; at least for me, the eloquence voices sound very muffled and hard to hear, especially when compared to the clarity and crisp sound of the vocalizer voices. So, for whatever it's worth, those are my thoughts.

By Ekaj on Tuesday, July 29, 2025 - 17:03

Hi all. I actually checked HumanWare's website yesterday and was able to complete and submit the survey. It asked if I wanted to answer some more questions about professional development or something like that, but I said no. I don't recall answering any questions about TTS. Regarding my preference in that area, I don't really have one. I pretty much like all TTS engines/voices that have been available through the years, with the notable exception of Microsoft Sam. But I think he passed long ago anyway in a nursing home somewhere far off where nobody saw him, lol. I'm wondering if he even had a memorial of any kind. But I'm starting to stray off topic so I'll go eat my fiber.