Acapela Group brought decades of experience in building natural sounding text-to-speech voices. Both companies share a strong dedication to the assistive technology market and were natural partners to tackle the challenges of developing children's voices designed for people who cannot speak.
#ACAPELA TEXT TO SPEECH FREE DOWNLOAD MAC#
The collaboration between Acapela Group and AssistiveWare dates back to 2003 when AssistiveWare was the first company to build a Mac product using the natural-sounding Acapela voices. After October 2013, the new Australian children voices will be available for licensing to other developers to utilize in their apps and communication devices, allowing, even more, children to access programs with voices that resemble their own. Version 3.0 also adds a number of other major features, including ExpressivePower(TM) and access for people with motor challenges who have difficulty using iPad's touch interface.
#ACAPELA TEXT TO SPEECH FREE DOWNLOAD UPDATE#
The Australian children's voices and female voice are included in the Proloquo2Go text-to-speech app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad through a free 3.0 version update released today on the App Store. "With over 2,000 hours of research, recording, processing and development, the new Australian children's voices are a fulfilling milestone and a reflection of our longtime leadership in this field." "This groundbreaking project is the first of its kind in the industry," said Lars-Erik Larsson, CEO of Acapela Group. We are excited that those phrases will finally resemble the child's own voice." "Often, we hear that the cognitive and emotional skills of children are finally understood after using Proloquo2Go, where previously the child may have never been able to verbalize or express his or her thoughts. Children and their parents have credited Proloquo2Go with a major improvement in their daily communication." This was one of the primary motivators for creating the child voices - to have a product that more accurately represents its users.Ĭommenting on the launch of the Australian children's voices, founder, and CEO of AssistiveWare, David Niemeijer said, "Last year we introduced British and American children voices, which have already seen over 15,000 downloads and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Approximately 60% of the Proloquo2Go user base is 11-years-old or younger (as young as 2-years-old), yet prior to these new voices, Australian children only had access to an adult Australian male voice. Proloquo2Go already provides a voice to over 50,000 users around the world, including over 5,000 Australians. I look forward to hearing lots of happy little Vegemites using these voices in homes, shops, schools and the great outdoors!," said Jane Farrall, Speech Pathologist, and Special Educator. Having an age appropriate voice, which not only speaks with an Australian accent but also provides children with access to the Aussie vocabulary, will have a positive impact on their social and communication development - in more ways than we can imagine. "The new Australian children's voices will finally enable our children without speech to talk like their friends. The new Australian children voices, Liam and Olivia, were recorded by and for children and, are now available for users to select as their preferred text-to-speech voice to communicate a want, need or thought using symbol-based communication or when typing with word prediction. To complete the family today Proloquo2Go is also introducing Lisa, a new adult Australian female voice.Īccording to research, 1.3% of the Australian population, including approximately 35,000 children in Australia aged between 3 and 12 years, cannot rely on their natural speech to meet their daily communication needs. are proud to unveil that the first ever genuine, natural-sounding Australian children's voices are now available in Proloquo2Go, a text-to-speech app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad designed to provide a voice for children who cannot speak.