Ethical questions of Speech Central marketing

I appreciate everyone's kindness in this thread. I have also received two emails with similar content, thanks to those people too.

Regarding the new features, there is a new version of Speech Central in the works that is written from the scratch - not a single line of previous code is directly copied. It will be the biggest update that any text-to-speech app has ever had. Literally much more than any competitor update did receive in the last 5 years cumulative. I can't disclose much yet, but few aspects can be shared:
- Currently the app has more than 40 settings. The new app will have more than 100 settings.
- As said I can't disclose some big features at the moment, but I think that people here will be happy to hear that the Find feature is now accessible and also you will be able to use VoiceOver read all feature for the text control. Those were the requests of users regarding accessibility that were not implemented in the current version. One thing that I can disclose too is that it is planned to have much more advanced, comprehensive and reliable syncing (though this hasn't been worked on yet while previously mentioned things are already implemented).
- There is some possibility that the Mac app may be free with VoiceOver too. I do consider to publish a completely new Mac app as part of the family that currently includes iOS, watchOS and tvOS app. At which point it would be covered by the same license (which would be probably more expensive than just iOS app, but a bit less expensive than both apps) and it would be free for VoiceOver users too. However that is a distant possibility as it comes with range of issues, most notably that the new app starts from 0, so I have to give up of more than 500 global ratings on the App Store that I currently have. And at some point I would have to stop to update the old Mac app which wouldn't be fair to some Mac-only users.
- Finally I will need to set minimal versions for this update to iOS 16 and macOS 13 as it uses some quite new technologies from Apple. That specifically makes it troublesome to talk about exact publishing date. The code should be ready sometimes by September at earliest. But it is not certain that enough users will update to those OSes by then, especially for macOS.
- As part of this effort new Apple Watch app has been already published for testing (https://testflight.apple.com/join/7vK4ptgz) and it is working on that completely new code. While it certainly shows some potential, the real big surprises will be in iOS, iPadOS and macOS.

@Jeff, while I understand your position, let's look from this perspective - if VDR did cleaning of floors and Speech Central wouldn't do it, would you still say that Speech Central did something wrong?

There is not a single other text-to-speech app out of few thousand in existence that does that. It is entirely different category of software and there are few other apps from that different category that could do something similar (I think).

Again I fully understand that it doesn't replace VDR for you, but I am not sure why is that a question at all for a text-to-speech app. You can search for another app in that category if you need one (or you can stay with VDR if it is fine for you, as said I really don't mind even if people that use VDR for text-to-speech decide to continue to use it).

Also I do appreciate that you provided the feedback on why you can't use the app, I understand that it was meant to be in a positive way.

@Dominic I highly prefer people to talk negatively on Speech Central than not to talk at all, so I appreciate that you have stated your opinion.

Speaking of that, as far as I understand your claim I am guilty that I have made a good app, made it free for blind people and spoke in public regarding that. Yes, I did mention Voice Dream Reader and quoted some facts, but I don’t see that it changes the point, and even if it does it is literally just one small detail in overall story that you can ignore if you don’t like it.

As a human bean of 40 something, I still don’t understand that. Could you provide more details of what exactly is wrong in that?

Also one implicit question - Voice Dream Reader has risen the price for blind people for around 100x. As you were talking on coolness I would like to hear your opinion on whether that is cool or not?

I have promised to say thanks to everyone who just downloads the app, irrelevant of his opinion on it and whether and how much he is going to use it.

As such I am very happy with both Bingo Little and Laurent Cadet de Fontenay comments even that they clearly stated that they are also Voice Dream Reader users and will continue to be, but they also had some nice words for my app.

They both found one good point and that is that Speech Central can do some things that Voice Dream Reader can't and there is no reason not to use them both.

Regarding the complete replacement of Voice Dream Reader with Speech Central I would like to point to few things. People that have used Voice Dream Reader for years cannot have the same level of proficiency in Speech Central for few minutes. They didn't have that level of proficiency in Voice Dream Reader for that time interval either. On top of that Speech Central might have a slightly higher learning curve for blind people as they might need to customise audio buttons which is not something that is extremely hard but the alternative might be easier to discover in Voice Dream Reader. I might consider to have different defaults when VoiceOver is on, that should be helpful, but I also need some community input on that.

Overall I understand if some people don't have time to invest in this and there are no hard feelings regarding that. I would never blame any regular user for that. However for those people that take themselves as community leaders, that recommend products to many people (sometimes even to thousands), the case is quite different, and this is intended mostly to them. I do hope that one they they will feel a shame on how they acted to me.

Also I do praise Winston for everything that he did and no one can deny that he contributed greatly to accessibility and to the blind community. I don't think that even now with this price hike Voice Dream Reader should be delisted from web sites that talk about tools for blind people. But I do think that Speech Central deserves at least some place on at least some of them. And it doesn't. It would be nice if someone asked some of those people on why is that.

@gregg the school version is available on the App Store at the moment, though it is correct that it was pulled for some time.

It was intended for the educational market mostly for elementary schools. It didn't have much of a success and it might have confused some people so that is why it was pulled recently.

But now that Voice Dream Reader is making moves that are very education-unfriendly I am bringing it back to the market to see if schools might be interested in it this season.

It has some specifics that are important for schools:
- it doesn't collect any data (not even anonymous data) and as such it is the only app of this type certified by Apple for use for kids. Voice Dream Reader never had this and this in particular should have been a red flag for elementary school usage but no one cared
- it is more limited on what it can do on the internet
- it is a paid app so that schools can easily deploy them on many devices (deploying in-app purchases or subscriptions on many devices is hard for schools and they avoid such products at the very start).

In the help there is an article on how to setup Microsoft Neural Voices: https://speechcentral.net/ios-help/#azure

I agree that it is not placed at the most prominent position, but if I provided a direct link inside the app Apple would say that he needs 15% cut on what Microsoft gets, so such thing couldn't pass the review...

On top of that I downplayed this at start intentionally - this can be optionally setup on Microsoft portal as a paid service and charged per consumption and as such there were always chances that something could go wrong and I could be blamed for that. But half year later I don't think anything went wrong (both for users that set it as a free and paid service) and it is a good thing to share.

There is no difference between their paid and free service aside that on the free service you are limited to half million characters a month (which should fit most of the books).

Thanks for all these analysis, I quite agree with everything that you said.

Even more important, I hope your husband is doing well and I wish him a quick rehabilitation.

You've made me think of some things that I would like to write, but no need to hurry to reply, actually even just your current message is already more than great.

As said your points are all very well made, but one of the reasons why I've decided to talk regarding this isn't because I felt lost, but rather because I see that times are changing and now is the time to tell this - when you get on the top you will mostly forget that it hurt and you will probably not be motivated to talk about that. But one should talk about that not just because of himself but because of everyone who was or will be in that position.

When I say that times are changing there is really nothing that can keep Voice Dream Reader where it is now. Not because I like it or hate it but for the plain facts that I'll explain.

This is one of the markets where everything starts from education market. Kids get tools at school and it is almost certain that they will continue to use it. While that is a totally different market, that is a top reason on how Mac got established in the US.

Voice Dream Reader has left the education market in full. Maybe they did it intentionally or maybe they are still not aware of that, but there is no turning back. You can't have a product with in-app purchases or subscriptions in school as you can't manage such things through Apple's portal for iPad management. And once they did it they can't revert this decision except to launch a new product.

But then we come to the second problem and that is the pricing. Schools pay for iPads with keyboards around 300$ with discounts that they get. I can't say what is the maximal amount that some school would pay for a text-to-speech app, but it is certainly below 100$ one time payment. And I don't see this company selling the software at that price.

As such new kids will grow that will never hear of Voice Dream Reader and slow the population will change.

@Devin, I am not sure if I completely understood your request, but if you refer to swiping up and down to perform those functions when some controls do have focus the app already does it on iOS.

I have checked on Android and I think that it is impossible to do that. It was a long time ago since I was looking for that data so I don't remember all details clearly. But as far as I remember I have found statements by developers that tried to do that and found it to be impossible and I also couldn't find any documentation from Google that would present that accessibility use case (that is certain).

Regarding the Mac, there are keyboard shortcuts for all those actions. Other than that, the future version of the app is being built in SwiftUI, so most of the code will be shared among the platforms. Apple did amazing thing with this technology that you can share almost all code with literally no compromise. As such all those things implemented on iOS will be available on the Mac too (as long as macOS supports it/has equivalents).

I think I have already answered this above, but let's add some details.

Currently Speech Central is being developed as text-to-speech app. I am not going into other categories until I see that there is nothing meaningful and important to add to the text-to-speech experience.

As such one day the app might consider to be something wider like "audio experience app". But that day is not today.

For example I had an email from one user yesterday. He said that he has asked that there can be mode when text is read but not saved. Few years ago I have denied that as there were too many more important things to do. But I think I will add this in the next big version now.

But for now you've got to accept - I want to make the best text-to-speech app. Not the app that does other things well while being also text-to-speech app.

I do agree with your statement, but implementing anything will bring more users...

There are clearly some people that need and use this, but then if that audience was big every text-to-speech app would have something like that. And aside from VDR no text-to-speech app currently has such a feature and there are thousands of them if you count small apps too.

Just for the record I made a Bookshare integration because I was asked here to do so. At the end there were months with no book downloads. I can't develop software for individual users that use the function rarely.

Obviously there is nothing wrong in asking, you cannot know of general statistics of something and whether there are millions or just few people that follow that pattern. Frequently requests turn into a great feature.

To make it clear regarding the Bookshare as it is sensitive topic here, I'll try to contact them and see what they think regarding the current situation. If they are to represent Speech Central equally with other apps that they regularly promote to users then I'll certainly put much more effort into this.

I'll also check if schools get interested into this for the next year in light of current events.

But if things go as they did I can't say what is the future of Bookshare integration. If the usage is kept at least on this month level, I'll put the effort to keep it. But as before that it was literally just dozen books a year - I guess that if it ends like that those users that still use it will have to download books from their website. I cannot rewrite this in some short time and if no one uses it it is better to put time into features that people actually use.

I have previously mentioned that the completely new app is in the work. As part of that effort you can use the Watch app from that product through TestFlight. That wasn’t the plan but it was the only way to provide the Watch app at the moment.

In the few months there will be just one app with TestFlight for the new version of it aside from the current Watch app you will be able to test the new iOS app and the new Mac app. And then at some point that TestFlight will be released into the main app and there won’t be TestFlight at least for some time.

Thanks Simone. I had one great blind user from Italy. He certainly recommended the app to few people he knew. Overall Italy was a great place for Speech Central - could be because I am fairly near, in Serbia.

Other than that I also appreciate your answer in another thread. I wanted to talk about that before too.

I gave up as empathy is at historical low in todays society and most people will end up thinking "I am not affected it is fine for me, let others think for themselves". That's not a pattern just in this community but in todays society overall. No one should be blamed for acting by community standard - he can be educated for the better, but certainly can't be blamed.

Maybe few decades ago that wouldn't be surprising to anyone, but today your line "I am not affected but I need to think of other people" is standing out, it probably brings you to top 1%, and you should be proud of that.

I haven't heard thus far that the app wouldn't run on the Mac, but if someone wants to avoid that potential case the app is also available through Setapp where you have the free trial. It is legitimate if you use Setapp only for free trial and then end up buying the app on the Mac App Store.

I have answered regarding that above in more details and the thread is long, so I'll answer again but a bit shorter.

There are no plans for audiobooks. That might happen in some distant future. But in general those are different categories and everyone who wants audiobooks can find the app does that as there are likely hundreds or even thousands of apps that do one of those things, but just one that does both.

It is like asking why the TV set doesn't come with the game-console built-in. It isn't completely unrelated and makes some sense, but it isn't tightly related either and mostly those solutions are provided by different vendors.

I do appreciate your time.

I am not sure exactly how I could made up in my mind that I have received dozen of insults from blind people on Twitter while mentioning Voice Dream Reader, while I haven't received a single insult from Speechify or NaturalReader even if number of those contacts was significantly higher. If you put my mental capabilities that much in question, I'll decline to comment. But if you put this into question you either think that I am a liar or someone who has a very deep psychological problems.

Anyway I do agree that Voice Dream Reader offers voices that were last updated around 10 years ago and were amazing technology at that time. Speech Central has Microsoft neural voices that makes those voices sound like 10 year old technology, as they are. I understand that this omission was not intentional and I still appreciate that you have shared your experience.

Speech Central was never intended to be a cheap copy of Voice Dream Reader and as such you can't expect copies of VDR interface or its features. Speech Central is certainly a very bad copy of Voice Dream Reader as it isn't a copy at all. But it doesn't mean it can't be a great text-to-speech app in its own, and in most use cases at least as good app.

I appreciate your writing and support and I do agree with lot of writing above.

You have properly mentioned that apps like this are not for blind people only.

As such your arguments of underdog are clearly valid and they do play a part in this, but they should be the same for every market. But I have done reasonably well on other markets in many of the aspects mentioned above, while I have made the app free for the blind people and met with the backlash instead of better receipt than on other markets.

I did have some new inputs for some specific points that should be improved that aren't used widely by every VoiceOver users.

That is certainly welcome and I'll take a look at that. I can't say exactly how many people with VoiceOver had Speech Central installed before, but I assume that it is around 2,000 with some of them not being active users (but I would guess that half would be active). The fact that no one among them has complained for years and some of them were frequent users and pointed to some other problems means that for most people this isn't issue that breaks their usage pattern.

On the other hand I do certainly consider that as a valid input and certainly it is something to be worked on. Based just on the description I would assume that this will work without the problem in the SwiftUI version of the app that should be launched by the end of the year.

I did order translations from the same source, it was from agency that contracts professional translators. Multiple mine close friends that speak some of those languages natively said that the translations that they have checked were excellent. As a fun fact before being accepted Spanish translation was checked by one blind user in Mexico and he confirmed it to be very good. But if you think that there are some things that can be improved I can send you those to check.

Karl Jung said that you can't help the people that don't want to be helped. So I don't think that any particular strategy would have worked. The only thing that has changed is that community is now open to receive the help.

Also I really try to read your comments from the bright side, but it is puzzling on how you think that users that were buying a couple of VDR voices at best had access to more voices than few dozen per language that you get from Microsoft by simple sign in?

I found the issue and I understand why no one reported it yet.

You will get the issue only if you don’t want to adjust settings with VoiceOver gestures but rather you enter the setting and only while you are in the middle of changing the setting that way.

As the next major version won’t have the same interface for changing settings there won’t be such a problem.

But even now you won’t have a problem if you use VoiceOver gestures to change the settings (which is easier and preferable way for VoiceOver users). And while I do agree that every bug should be fixed, I really can’t see some big use case of someone needing to pause the anudio exactly while he is in the middle of changing the setting.

Hi Octocorn,

thanks for your comments.

Regarding the audiobooks, I can confirm that something like that is ruled out this year and most likely next year, but it isn't ruled out forever just at this point I can't say that it will be implemented and when that may happen.

Regarding the localisations, the app currently has UI translated in 13 languages on iOS (14 on Android). That's not a small number and while VDR has more of them (26 as I count at the moment) there are some languages that SC supports and it doesn't.

Currently there are two more localisations planned for this year. As such I would say that your general information regarding localisations wasn't correct.

However I do rule out user translations, I did one translation to my language myself and I can say it was a very complex task for me even as I provided all terms myself and the other language is my native language. So I have a high doubt in allowing a random user to translate it - it can get very well but it can also get very bad. All those 12 translations of SC were done by professionals and then authorised by some users (as clearly I can't check the quality myself in most cases).

That is the first point, it costs around 100$ per language and as such I must also check how much I earn from that language and whether it makes even remote sense to invest that much.

The second point is similar. Adding new features is more complex when you have more languages. You might need to spend an additional hour or two just two collect all translations and place them where they should be and something may go wrong in that process which then may add additional time. So there must be some usage to say that it is OK.

Finally, there is one more rule and that is that I don't want to localise for the language that doesn't have text-to-speech support in the app. Croatian was ruled out based on that till the last year, but now it isn't ruled out.