Release of Acapela TTS Voices for NVDA 1.9

Compatible with NVDA2023.1 (Beta)

Added voices in HQ: Alfie & Amy (Northern English), Archie & Eilidh (English (Scottish)), Anthony (Canadian French), Lizzie, Malik, Owen, Tamira & Tiana (English (US)), Rikke (Danish), Vidhi (Hindi), Sergio (Brazilian Portuguese), Filip & Freja (Swedish)

Is your Acapela voice laughing and crying with NVDA?

Acapela voices use special codes to laugh, cry, cough and so on. These codes are called “Acapela sounds”. the Acapela sounds are usually not found in ordinary text, it may be amusing or useful to write special texts to hear these special effects.

Unfortunately NVDA has few smart rules which interferes with the Acapela sounds making it impossible to hear them, which has been a cause of frustration for many users of the Acapela TTS for NVDA plug-in.

However thanks to some clever and helpful NVDA users from the <a title=”NVDA topic” href=”https://nvda.groups.io/g/nvda/topic/4083469″>NVDA mailing list</a> we have now found a solution to the issue.

1) If you want your Acapela TTS Voices for NVDA to cry, laugh and cough in NVDA you need to edit an NVDA file called “builtin.dic”. Always backup the original “builtin.dic” file before editing it, so that you can always reverse your changes.
builtin.dic is found in the installation folder of NVDA and contains few regular expression rules to handle text in a smart way. One of them is named “Break words that have numbers at the end” and it is the one interfering with the Acapela.
To tell NVDA not to use this rule you need to add a # character at the beginning of the next line, that should then look like the following:
<pre># ((?:(?=\D)\w)+)(\d+)    \1 \2    1    1</pre>
and save file.
The # character means that you are “commenting out” this rule and thus it would not be applied.

2) Open NVDA’s Punctuation and Symbols dialog (NVDA menu -&gt; preferences -&gt; Punctuation and Symbols…) and find the entry for # (number sign), and change the value of the “Send actual symbol to synthesizer” combo box from “never” to “Only below symbol’s level”. and press Okay.

3) In NVDA’s Speech settings (NVDA menu -&gt; preferences -&gt; Settings … -&gt; Speech) Set NVDA’s speech punctuation level to “None” and press Okay.

4) Save NVDA’s configuration and restart NVDA.

After that you will be able to use the Acapela Sounds. here below is a list of codes. Please note that these do not work with all voices, but only with the most recent voices of Acapela:
<ul>
<li>#AARGH01#</li>
<li>#AARGH02#</li>
<li>#AARGH03#</li>
<li>#BREATH01#</li>
<li>#BREATH02#</li>
<li>#BREATH03#</li>
<li>#CLICK01#</li>
<li>#CLICK02#</li>
<li>#COUGH01#</li>
<li>#COUGH02#</li>
<li>#CRY01#</li>
<li>#CRY02#</li>
<li>#CRY03#</li>
<li>#LAUGH01#</li>
<li>#LAUGH02#</li>
<li>#LAUGH03#</li>
<li>#MMM01#</li>
<li>#MMM02#</li>
<li>#MMM03#</li>
<li>#SLEEP01#</li>
<li>#SLEEP02#</li>
<li>#SNEEZE01#</li>
<li>#SNEEZE02#</li>
<li>#SWALLOW01#</li>
<li>#SWALLOW02#</li>
<li>#THROAT01#</li>
<li>#THROAT02#</li>
<li>#THROAT03#</li>
<li>#WHISTLE01#</li>
<li>#WHISTLE02#</li>
</ul>
A complete explanation of Acapela’s sounds and exclamation, including a link to a huge list with all sounds and exclamations is found <a title=”Acapela’s exclamation and sounds” href=”http://www.acapela-group.com/voice-smileys/”>here</a>.

Release of Acapela TTS Voices for NVDA 1.7

Compatible with NVDA 2021.1

Added voices in Colibri: Louise (French Canada) , Hanna and Hanus (Faroese) ,Biera and Elle (Sami)

Added voices in HQ: Merel & Thijs (Dutch), Hanna & Hanus (Faroese), Louise (Canadian French), Elise & Valentin (French), Jonas & Lea (German), (Elias & Emilie (Norwegian), Isabel (Portuguese), Filip & Freja (Swedish)

Removed voices in HQ: Celia (Portuguese)

Release of Acapela TTS Voices for NVDA 1.6

What’s new in the version 1.6 ? 

AUDIO DUCKING:

Audio ducking automatically lowers the volume of media content so that a visually impaired user can still hear the speech generated by the screen reader.

NEW LANGUAGES:

  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Dutch (Belgian)
  • Finnish
  • German
  • Norwegian
  • Scanian
  • Swedish
  • Swedish (Finland)
  • Swedish (Gothenburg)

NEW VOICES:

  • Eliska (Czech)
  • Mette (Danish)
  • Rasmus (Danish)
  • Daan (Dutch)
  • Femke (Dutch)
  • Jasmijn (Dutch)
  • Max (Dutch)
  • Jeroen (Belgian Dutch)
  • Sofie (Belgian Dutch)
  • Zoe (Belgian Dutch)
  • Sanna (Finnish)
  • Anais (French)
  • Andreas (German)
  • Claudia (German)
  • Julia (German)
  • Klaus (German)
  • Sarah (German)
  • Chiara (Italian)
  • Bente (Norwegian)
  • Kari (Norwegian)
  • Olav (Norwegian)
  • Mia (Scanian)
  • Elin (Swedish)
  • Emil (Swedish)
  • Emma (Swedish)
  • Erik (Swedish)
  • Samuel (Finnish Swedish)
  • Kal (Gothenburg Swedish)
  • Maria (Spanish)

If you already have a version of the Acapela TTS for NVDA plug-in, you can just remove the older version of engine and voices, and then download and install the new version via the NVDA “Manage add-ons” menu.
License is not affected by the update, so no action at all is required, the new version of the add-on will find and use the existing license.

For additional information, visit the download page.

Acapela for NVDA v1.5

This version brings to the NVDA add-on the latest improvements for all voices, including improvements in both sound and pronunciation for each voice.
It also corrects the issue reported by several users related to problem while using some of the exclamations of different voices. This issue has been corrected with the help of a friendly user who helped us to verify that the reported issue was corrected. Thanks Michael.
If you already have a version of the Acapela TTS for NVDA plug-in, you can just remove the older version of engine and voices, and then download and install the new version via the NVDA “Manage add-ons” menu.
License is not affected by the update, so no action at all is required, the new version of the add-on will find and use the existing license.

Say Bonjour to our French voices!

The Acapela for NVDA family has just got bigger!

Today we have added 7 new French voices to Acapela for NVDA. Also, for each French voice there is also a Belgian French variant, speaking numbers and other expressions in the Belgian way.

The seven French voices have different styles and personalities, download them, test them and discover which voice is the right one for you:

Download center for Acapela TTS for NVDA

With the addition of French voices, the Acapela for NVDA voice and language portfolio has grown up to 18 languages and 80 voices (65 High-Quality voices and 25 Colibri voices).

We also added the French localization to the interface, so our French friends will be able to get a complete French experience.

Current users with a license for Acapela TTS will also be able to enjoy the new voices with no additional cost and without need to do any change to the license, just download and update the engine, the colibri package and download the French voices.