The female voice
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Creating a Voice for learners

BIS have funded JISC TechDis to create a high quality synthetic speech voice for learners to make it easy to use to be more productive by having the choice to listen to documents as well as reading them.

But which voice is best?

We're working with Cereproc and - thanks to over 300 people who helped in our recent survey - we've already chosen a male voice for development. Now it's time for the female voice that many of you have been asking for. We've got a selection of voice recordings from different ladies and we'd like to know which voices you'd prefer to have reading out your documents to you. We've included a good range of regional accents and we hope you'll enjoy listening to them all and scoring them to see which will be the female voice reading your notes to you in the future!

For each recording they had to read out 8 different snippets of information so you can hear how they'd handle a range of text from fiction to factual, addresses to emails...

There are two ways you can hear the MP3 file for each of the voices:

1) You can click on the link next to each question. You'll have the option to save the MP3 file or run it on your installed media player. Choose the option to run it then answer the questions for that voice. Then move on to the next question with its link to a different voice. (We recommend this approach for screenreader users).

2) Alternatively you can save cluttering your desktop with lots of downloads by clicking on the link to the Voice collection (see below) which provides a separate page for each voice and is fully keyboard accessible. Link to the voice collection (a Xerte learning object).

Please complete this survey as soon as possible and no later than Weds 21st December 2011.

1. What stage are you at in your education and learning? Please tick all that apply.

What stage are you at in your education and learning? Please tick all that apply. Further Education college or Sixth form.

Specialist College.

University.

Work based learning

Adult / community learning

Unemployed

Other (please tell us more below)

Other (please tell us about it)

2. What age range are you?

What age range are you?

That tells us a little about you - now let's get on to the voices.

In this section you get to listen to the voices and tell us what you think... remember there are two ways you can hear the MP3 file for each of the voices:
1) open up a new page with all of them on (may not work with some screenreaders) or
2) click on the link next to each question. You'll have the option to save the MP3 file or run it on your installed media player. Choose the option to run it then answer the questions for that voice. Then move on to the next question with its link to a different voice. (We recommend this approach for screenreader users).

3. Please listen to voice 1 and answer the questions, giving a score from Poor to Very good then tell us if we consider this voice for further development.
Click here if you want direct link to Voice 1.

	Poor	Ok	Good	Very good
Clarity - How easily can you understand what they are saying?	Please listen to voice 1 and answer the questions, giving a score from Poor to Very good then tell us if we consider this voice for further development. Click here if you want direct link to Voice 1. Clarity - How easily can you understand* what they are saying? Poor	Clarity - How easily can you understand what they are saying? Ok	Clarity - How easily can you understand what they are saying? Good	Clarity - How easily can you understand what they are saying? Very good
Fluency - How easy to listen to are their speech patterns?	Fluency - How easy to listen to are their speech patterns? Poor	Fluency - How easy to listen to are their speech patterns? Ok	Fluency - How easy to listen to are their speech patterns? Good	Fluency - How easy to listen to are their speech patterns? Very good
Stamina - How would this voice be if you were listening for a long time?.	Stamina - How would this voice be if you were listening for a long time?. Poor	Stamina - How would this voice be if you were listening for a long time?. Ok	Stamina - How would this voice be if you were listening for a long time?. Good	Stamina - How would this voice be if you were listening for a long time?. Very good
Likeability - How likeable is this voice - is it one you'd choose to listen to?	Likeability - How likeable is this voice - is it one you'd choose to listen to? Poor	Likeability - How likeable is this voice - is it one you'd choose to listen to? Ok	Likeability - How likeable is this voice - is it one you'd choose to listen to? Good	Likeability - How likeable is this voice - is it one you'd choose to listen to? Very good