There is a new Irish accented text-to- speech product now available from CereProc. It will work on most operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 7 or Mac OS X. This Irish accented synthesiser is called Caitlin. It has a slight Dublin accent and sounds authentic.

This could be an alternative accent for any software that uses text- to- speech. Most communication software, screen readers or literacy support tools allow users to select alternative text-to-speech voices.

A demo of the voice can be heard at http://www.cereproc.com/en/node/303

CereProc voices cost £25

For tasks such as screen reading, PDF reading or converting text files to audio format such as WAV or MP3, software such as the following can be used. These are compatible applications, some of which are free, some of which require payment:

Balabolka
Word Talk – a speech plug in for MS Word
Adobe Reader – PDF reader
NVDA – a free screen reader
Natural Reader