hi! may i ask what app you use for your screen reader? it sounds rlly good.
I didn’t even think to say but several people have asked this now! @cuddlybeast, @wishiwasntstillhere, @selective-yellow, @dalltonagainst
I use Audiblogs.Â
I cannot say enough good about this Chrome extension, it is pretty amazing. I am very impressed by it and I did go looking into other options, including paid ones. This was the best one I found that functioned fully on a desktop computer. There may be some phone apps that are worthwhile but I wouldn't know.
It is new and it isn’t perfect though. Calling it a screen reader was also rather incorrect of me. It would be better to say it is a website reader and even that isn’t really it. It doesn’t read everything and seems to be able to cut out things like menus, lists of tags, ect. So it works really well for fics! And articles, blog posts, ect which appear to be more the intended use.
One other thing I rather enjoy is that you can share files. Here is the first chapter of Heroics and Other Things That Don't Require Superpowers by @thenarator (who has kindly given me permission to post this because they are awesome) so you can give it a listen. Link to the fic on AO3 here. (This fic is awesome!!)
As I said, it isn’t perfect so below the cut I am detailing out the issues I have had so far. I do really highly recommend it though! It is the best thing I have found out there and it is free!
There are some fics it cannot access on AO3. It isn’t reading my screen and it accesses the website itself meaning any fic that requires users to have an account or that is M or E rated it only gets the landing pages instead of the actual fic. Leaving these completely inaccessible to Audiblogs.Â
It also has a character limit of 100,000 which seems to be around 20,000 words give or take some because of varying word length.Â
The “Entire Work” option appears to also not work even on shorter multi-chaptered fics. It only reads the first chapter and you have to go and make new files for each individual chapter.
Which leads me to my current biggest issue. This is still new and UI is lacking. There is no way to move items around on the playlist and new items are added at the top. Meaning if you want to queue up an entire multi-chapter fic you have to do it backwards. I am given to understand that this is in part because you can use podcast apps to better organize things like playlists but I have yet to find a desktop podcast app that works with it. It does suggest several mobile apps that it works with though. (If anyone happens to find a desktop app for me to use please let me know!)
You will notice pretty quickly though some of the pronunciation issues, especially with Japanese words and names. It pronounces “Shouta” as “shout-ah.” It does a similar thing with Shouto making it “shout-oh.” It turns “Shou” and “Sho” into “shoe.” I don’t even know how to explain what it does to “Shouchan” but it isn’t pretty.Â
The other more general issue I have run into with pronunciation is different words with the same spelling. Bow being a good example. It tends to default to the “hair bow” pronunciation instead of “taking a bow” way of saying it. It does get it right sometimes but it seems the programming there could still use some work. “He’s up on the stage, bends at the waist, and takes a dramatic [hair] bow” is a bit weird to hear even though I know what it meant to say. I have also run into this issue with content (as in “he is feeling content” and “the content of this book”). Â
If a character stutters it reads the letters instead of the sound. "W-what" is said as "double you what" but I think this is a pretty common screen reader issue.
It seems to treat comma lists as a reason to rush. "Milk, eggs, cheese" should be said with pauses for the commas. "Milk [pause] eggs [pause] cheese" but instead it quickly says "MilkEggsCheese." Which is a bit funny but when listening to a serious fic can mess up the tone.
All that said, I really do highly recommend this. Even with the imperfections I have yet to find a single other TTS program that sounds this good. And it’s free!Â
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