gh's MathSpeak Finds Its "Voice" With Pittsburgh Speech Synthesis Company

gh  has chosen Cepstral to give its MathSpeak assistive software technology a synthetic voice.

When used in conjunction with a Digital Talking Book -- such as the gh PLAYER -- MathSpeak can render mathematics and science both orally and visually. The software enables print disabled people to assimilate complex mathematical and scientific formulas and prevents the confusion that arises from equations that have multiple non-visual variations.

"Ease of listening has been shown to have a huge impact on one's ability to learn and, therefore, voice quality directly affects the success of our software as a math and science learning tool," said David Schleppenbach, gh LLC's founder and CEO. "Cepstral's state-of-the-art text-to-speech (TTS) engine and voice technology helps our MathSpeak™ software talk more like a real human voice, making it easier to understand and promoting retention of the material.

"A spoken math equation that is read aloud can be interpreted to be one of several different equations," said Schleppenbach. "With MathML, that ambiguity is removed."

MathSpeak is software technology developed by gh in collaboration with Purdue University and with support from the Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology Fund.