Hello,
Since I switched from Android to iOS, I had to find an alternative for @Voice Aloud Reader (a TTS reading app for Android). Turned out, that Speech Central is a very good solution for that and I like it on iOS very much.
Since then I've started thinking about the capabilities of Speech Central to read books and that it would be nice if I have an app that can read books aloud to me not only on iOS, but on Windows as well. For that purpose on Windows now I use Balabolka and I like it, but it is available only for Windows.
So, I started wondering if Speech Central, having a Windows version as well, could replace Balabolka. In order to answer this question for myself, I need answers to a few questions that I have about Speech Central:
1. Is Speech Central on Windows accessible to use with a screen reader like NVDA?
2. What types of TTS standards does Speech Central support on Windows? For example, does it support SAPI5?
3. Can Speech Central sync the reading progress for a book between platforms like iOS and Windows? And if yes - how is it done?
Thanks in advance.
Comments
I purchased the Windows Version
Not exactly remembering how it went, but I purchased the app for Windows and it was difficult to read books with NVDA. As far as I remember you can not sync your reading progress across other devices. Again, I am not sure if this was the case, but from the remains of memory of the app it was not a pleasant experience in comparison to the iOS and MacOS variants.
1. Is Speech Central on Windows accessible to use with a screen
Hello, hope you are doing well.
Yes, Speech Central for Windows supports screen readers like NVDA, allowing accessible navigation through text-to-speech features. It’s a good alternative to Balabolka if you’re looking for cross-platform compatibility.
Re:
1. It should be, I believe that I have tested it.
2. In general yes, but some of such voices may work only on administrator account and such voices aren’t compatible with Speech Central in the current version (this should be changed sometimes in 2025).
3. No, syncing works only through the iCloud, so it works across all supported Apple devices. It was possible some time ago but that service cost me some money to run and almost no one wanted to pay for it, so it is likely a matter of the past.
Thank you
Hello,
Thanks to you all for your answers.
@Labsii, thanks for your explanations. Too bad for the lack of sync between Windows and iOS. Still, I may purchase Speech Central and check it out (it's not that expensive anyway).