Why does OSX Text to Speech occasionally garble/skip words on me?
March 11, 2013 4:41 PM
In order to reduce eyestrain when on the computer, I use the basic OSX (10.6.8) Text to Speech (System Prefs -> Speech -> Text to Speech) software for the computer to read out long-form articles found online. This works great! Except....sometimes when I ask "Alex" to read out to me it will skip or garble words from the highlighted article, usually one word per sentence or after x number of words. Why?
If I stop the software while it's reading, I can usually get it to not skip words after highlighting the article again. I know it's not a word-recognition issue since Alex spells out the word if it's unknown, and it happens if I use the the print version of the articles or straight from the source. Again, it usually stops skipping words on the second go-around so I don't think it's 'reading' code from the websites. Why does it do this and what can I do to fix this? I don't need a fancy-pants speech software like JAWS since I only use this for long articles.
If I stop the software while it's reading, I can usually get it to not skip words after highlighting the article again. I know it's not a word-recognition issue since Alex spells out the word if it's unknown, and it happens if I use the the print version of the articles or straight from the source. Again, it usually stops skipping words on the second go-around so I don't think it's 'reading' code from the websites. Why does it do this and what can I do to fix this? I don't need a fancy-pants speech software like JAWS since I only use this for long articles.
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posted by lollusc at 5:29 PM on March 11, 2013