News Release from: Babel Technologies
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 7 October 2003
Text-to-speech package enables blind organiser
Alva has successfully integrated and deployed the PocketBabil text-to-speech engine into its new MPO 5500 mobile phone organiser, a compact, easy to carry all-in-one device for mobile situations.
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Alva has successfully integrated and deployed Babel's PocketBabil text-to-speech engine into its new MPO 5500 mobile phone organiser, a compact, easy to carry all-in-one device for mobile situations. Combining an accessible GSM cellphone, organiser, and essential notetaker functionality, the MPO is the first personal wireless device of its kind for visually impaired individuals. The MPO is a compact, easy to carry all-in-one device for mobile situations that can be used to make phone calls, send SMS messages, look up information and take notes.
All functions including menus, contact information, SMS messages, services, and system information are made accessible in Braille and with speech.
Alva has chosen Babel's PocketBabil in US and UK English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian for its low memory requirements and accuracy.
Dr RGF Erens, R and D Manager of Alva comments: "We have selected Babel's PocketBabil for the MPO 5500 because of a its good quality-performance record.
Thereby a complete development toolkit and professional support is essential for a smooth integration of PocketBabil in our application".
He continued: "The state of the art technology used in the MPO, Microsoft Windows CE 4.1 and Intel Xscale processor was challenging for both Alva R and D and Babel-Infovox R and D.
Working closely together, the integration and optimisation of PocketBabil for our application was achieved according to planning".
PocketBabil is the embedded text-to-speech version of Babil, a high-quality multilingual TTS synthesiser, based on Babel's unique multiband resynthesis overlap add (MBROLA) concatenative algorithm.
This patented technology is available in 18 languages.
PocketBabil can produce any utterance in a given voice or language and features high segmental quality and fluidity of speech.
It is a software only system that requires very few hardware resources in terms of memory and computational load.
This TTS solution enables extremely fast development of new voices and languages.
"Babel-Infovox has been a key provider of speech technology for PC-based assistive technology applications for years.
Taking this knowledge and expertise to mobile applications has added essential functionality to products like the Alva MPO", said Lars-Erik Larsson, CEO of Babel-Infovox.
He added: "Moving our technology to mobile platforms has increased the accessibility and mobility of the handicapped community.
With the acceptance test done, it is evident that we can apply this proficiency to other multifunctional and demanding applications like those in the industrial environment".
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