Altering Text To Speech Pronunciations - 2020 Solutions?

[stoutstoatpress]

Note: I asked this over in the InDesign forums, and was directed over here instead.

Hi folx, I have a Text-To-Speech question for Acrobat / InDesign, or really any program that can realiably fix this issue for a final product.

I'm trying to tag a PDF , and it's mostly going all good. However, the lovely robot lady reads out specific formulae and names incorrectly. Examples below:

phrase | How it should be said | How the TTS says it

1d10 | one dee ten | one dee one zero

2d12 | two dee twelve | two dee one two

Sanche | san-shae | sanch

Aes Sedai | Aye said-aye | ees seedy

Furthermore, it doesn't grok these formulae as terms, so the sentences read rather breathlessly which could be confusing for listeners. I tried looking this up but I can't seem to find any YouTube tutorials covering subjects like this. The closest I've found is this:

> https://elearning.adobe.com/2009/03/customizing_text_to_speech_pro/

However, the article is from 2009, and the programs are now significantly outdated. It used terms like User Dictionary, but InDesign CC's option doesn't have any entry for TTS modifications, just a very basic spell check.

I'm new to accessibility tools for Acrobat and InDesign. I have a feeling that a solution would be related to tagging / changing the pronunciation of specific words or phrases, which is something else I'm interested in finding out.

Thanks for your help!!!

[RachitJain]

Hi,

Please set the followinf preference to update the ROL Voice : Preferences -> Reading -> Use default voice -> Select "Microsoft David Desktop" voice from dropdown. I believe this will solve the issue for you.

There are different voices that can be used to read the document. 

Please confirm if this resolves the issue here.

Thanks

Rachit

[stoutstoatpress]

Hi there, my problem isn't with voice reading the text outloud- it's with the pronunciation. I'm looking to find some way of telling any voice reading software how to pronounce a word or acronym.

Cheers

[RachitJain]

Hi, 

Just select the ROL Voice : Preferences -> Reading -> Use default voice -> Select "Microsoft David Desktop" voice from dropdown. This is not about the voice. This is related to the pronounciation only. Please try it out and see if this resolves the issue. This seems to fix most of the above mentioned phrases.

Thanks

Rachit

[Dave__M]

If you get the Adobe Reader/Acrobat to pronounce as you wish, there's no guarantee another screen reader will interpret and pronounce it similarly.  Generally, a screen reader that one chooses to use is a personal preference, and no two work the same.

Good luck!

Dave

[stoutstoatpress]

So there's no way to put in the appropriate pronunciation? Is there no way to tag phonetics, or make some kind of custom dictionary? I don't mean by spelling the word phonetically (e.g. fonetically), I mean taking the correct spelling and adding some kind of meta data that text-to-speech would recognise and pronounce correctly

[Beshkhen]

I know its been two years but looking to see if anyone has found a resolution for this. I need the inverse. I'm trying to do captions and need to train my adobe product on pronunciations so it can identify my acronyms.