Release of Acapela TTS Voices for NVDA 1.9.2

New version compatible with 2024.1
New voices added :

  • 10 English (United States) Child/teenager voices : Alinora Baelara Camryn Darian Eldowen Faelena Gilthor Haldria Ilion Jorvik
  • Bilingual Canadian French / Canadian English adult and child voices: Mélanie/Melany, Victoire/VictoriaJulien/Julian Kids US
  • English (India) VidhiEnglish

Several voices updated

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.