RoboBraille and Loquendo Support the Visually Impaired

RoboBraille recently launched an email service based on Loquendo TTS synthetic speech. The product is capable of automatically transforming written documents into a variety of alternative formats for visually and reading-impaired people: Contracted Braille, audio files in MP3 format, structured audio books in DAISY format, and visual Braille. RoboBraille can also be used to convert inaccessible documents in PDF, GIF and TIFF into more accessible formats.

RoboBraille is available free of charge to visually and reading-impaired users in strictly non-commercial contexts. 

Originally a Danish service developed jointly by Synscenter Refsnæs, an institution in Regional Zealand, and Sensus ApS, a private company, RoboBraille has been validated in Ireland, Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Great Britain in the framework of a pan-European consortium supported by the European Commission i to verify its technical, commercial, and cultural viability. Currently, the email service supports seven languages, with German and Polish to be added in 2010.

One of the reasons that Loquendo TTS was chosen for The RoboBraille Service was that it is lifelike, expressive synthetic speech with the widest range of voices and languages in the industry and fits any kind of speech application. "The RoboBraille team decided that Loquendo was the speech engine of choice because our visually impaired and reading-impaired users found the speech engines from Loquendo fluent and intelligible" said Lars Ballieu Christensen, RoboBraille's coordinator.

"We are delighted that RoboBraille has received the recognition it deserves in the prestigious Access-IT Learning award" said Rosanna Duce, vice president at Loquendo. "At Loquendo, we're proud to be part of a network that is making a significant difference to the lives of the disabled community worldwide."