Text-to-speech system in 6 languages launched

The languages include Hindi, Marathi, Bangla, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam.
The minister also launched web-based Optical Character Recognition systems (OCR) for Hindi and  Punjabi speaking people.

“This initiative is a significant step towards digital inclusion of differently abled people from different linguistic background,” Pilot said.

Technology Development for Indian Language (TDIL) Programme of the Department of Information Technology, under a consortium project has developed this TTS system.
It has also been integrated with Non Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) screen reader and Optical Character Recognition System (OCRA).

Besides linguistic diversity, these technologies will cater to the needs of differently-abled people and will go a long way in assisting them to become part of the mainstream Information Technology.

According to ministry officials, the use of these technologies will provide an impetus towards wider usage of Indian languages for governance and related applications and will augment social inclusiveness and reach-out to the specially abled section of the society.

Text-to-Speech is computer software which renders the machine readable text into human voice. The TTS software shall enable people with visual impairments or low vision disabilities to listen to written works on a computer or a mobile device.

OCR systems convert paper documents to electronic form so that printed books and records can be accessed and processed using computer-based techniques.
OCR for Indian scripts can make this literature web accessible.