Have you used Text to Speech tools before? Did you find it useful? Did you try out some of the different voices? What impact did the different voices have on your ability to absorb information?

I tested out a few of the Text to Speech web extension tools listed including, Read Aloud and Natural Reader. I found them both to be useful, however, I preferred Natural Reader much more because I found it easier to navigate and personalize to my audio preferences, such as the voice and speed. I noticed major differences between the voice on Read Aloud and the voice I selected on Natural Reader. The voice I selected was “Sara”, which was a woman’s voice that seemed to be the most natural human voice and it did not sound very robotic compared to the other options. I also really liked that I could set my own speed for the reading, as it could flow at the same pace that I would normally read. I had actually found that this tool was quite helpful when I was testing it on the EDCI 337 website. I really liked how it would highlight the section it was reading off in small chunks as it made me pay more attention and kept me engaged. One thing that I did notice that may not be very helpful to someone who is visually impaired, is that it did not state aloud if there was a photo, but would just read the text below it. If the text below the image did not have any mention of there being a photo, such as, “This is an image of”, it would likely cause some confusion to someone with visual impairment. I thought this was interesting because in Katie Sehl’s article, Inclusive Design for Social Media: Tips for Creating Accessible Channels, it was mentioned to skip saying “image of”, as those who are visually impaired prefer to not have that. This made me more curious about the multimedia preferences of visually impaired people and I am keen to learn more about it.

This image demonstrates the difference between equality and equity. On the left side, there are three people trying to pick apples off a tree but they are all different heights and only 1 person can reach the apples, which illustrates equality. On the right side, showing equity, there are the same three people, but those who were not able to reach the tree now have something to step on to make them able to grab the apples.

I thought this week’s content was really interesting and gave me further insight into how to properly accommodate the learning needs of many people. Having a multimedia framework that can serve the same functionality to everyone is so important and can greatly help those who may have disabilities or need extra support for their learning and other uses for media.