Meet Jess, Jack, Stuart & Heather – realistic voices for free* download

I have recently started listening to my books and papers, rather than reading them. This frees me up to do other things while I listen, such as cook, take a bath or do some tidying up. It also gives my eyes a well needed break from staring at a computer screen or paper.

As part of an online e-learning course I am helping to develop, I am using the TechDis Jess voice to provide audio files of the commentary, as an alternative to reading. I have had to tweak some of the text – for example, UCL needs to be written with spaces between each letter in order for Jess to pronounce each letter individually and I needed to add a hyphen to CMALT (C-MALT) for it to be pronounced correctly. But for the most part I can leave the text much as it is typed. I then run it through a free, open source software called Balabolka to produce an audio file that participants on the course can download and listen to.

TechDis Jess and other UK voices (including Scottish and Welsh options) are available from www.heacademy.ac.uk/jisc-techdis-voices.

Balabolka is available from: www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm.
Listen to a sample:

Listen on SoundCloud…

*Staff and learners studying at England’s UK and FE institutions can download the voices free of charge and those at Scottish and Welsh institutions can download local voices.