Some programs that use Text-To-Speech use the Windows Speech application to set the voice, rate, and other aspects of the speech output. By default, in Windows 7 64-bit the only voice that is available is Microsoft Ana. Even if other voices are available on the computer they cannot be selected as the default voice. Two programs that use the default speech characteristics in this way are Adobe Reader and DAISy Pipeline. Adobe Reader uses the computer’s default voice when the Read Out loud feature is selected from the View menu. DAISy Pipeline uses the computers speech characteristics when producing a full-text-full-audio DAISy e-text.

Selecting the default voice can be done by running the following:

Windows -> sysWOW64 -> speech -> SpeechUX -> SAPI.cpl

Not all of the voices on the computer can be selected using this method. Some voices that are not SAPI 5 compatible will not appear for selection. Some voices that appear cannot be selected since they are only licensed to use one program. For example, some voices used for JAWS screenreader cannot be used by other programs and cannot be set as the default voice.

David Schwarte