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>.

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 NVDA mailing list 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:

# ((?:(?=\D)\w)+)(\d+)    \1 \2    1    1

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 -> preferences -> 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 -> preferences -> Settings … -> 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:

• #AARGH01#
• #AARGH02#
• #AARGH03#
• #BREATH01#
• #BREATH02#
• #BREATH03#
• #CLICK01#
• #CLICK02#
• #COUGH01#
• #COUGH02#
• #CRY01#
• #CRY02#
• #CRY03#
• #LAUGH01#
• #LAUGH02#
• #LAUGH03#
• #MMM01#
• #MMM02#
• #MMM03#
• #SLEEP01#
• #SLEEP02#
• #SNEEZE01#
• #SNEEZE02#
• #SWALLOW01#
• #SWALLOW02#
• #THROAT01#
• #THROAT02#
• #THROAT03#
• #WHISTLE01#
• #WHISTLE02#

A complete explanation of Acapela’s sounds and exclamation, including a link to a huge list with all sounds and exclamations is found here.

We also invite all users to send us tips on mispronounced words and names by sending an email to contact@acapela-nvda.com or use the “report a pronunciation bug” field in the type&talk demo here on this page.

How to use the speech dictionary with the Acapela TTS for NVDA add-on

The speech dictionaries menu (found in the Preferences menu) contains dialogs that allow you to manage the way NVDA pronounces particular words or phrases. There are currently three different types of speech dictionaries. They are:

• Default: rules in this dictionary affect all speech in NVDA.
• Voice: rules in this dictionary affect speech for the synthesizer voice currently being used.
• Temporary: rules in this dictionary affect all speech in NVDA, but only for the current session. These rules are temporary and will be lost if NVDA is restarted.

All dictionary dialogs contain a list of rules which will be used for processing the speech. The dialog also contains Add, Edit and Remove buttons.

To access the Speech dictionaries, press and hold the NVDA key, plus N to open the NVDA menu.  Then press the down arrow once to get to the preferences menu.  press the right arrow to access it.  Press the down arrow until you hear NVDA say “Speech dics”.

To add a new rule to the dictionary, press the Add button, and fill in the fields in the dialog box that appears and then press Ok. You will then see your new rule in the list of rules. However to make sure your rule is actually saved, make sure to press Ok to exit the dictionary dialog all together once you have finished adding/editing rules.

The rules for NVDA’s speech dictionaries allow you to change one string of characters into another.  For example, I like Ella, and she is the default voice for my screen reader.  She gets the word “peruse” wrong.  She says “parice”.  To teach her to pronounce the word correctly, I would go to the “voice” dictionary, and In the Add rule dialog, I would type the word “peruse” in the Pattern field, and I would type “per ruse” in the Replacement field. Now, Ella will say: “peruse” as she should. You may also want to type a description of the rule in the Comment field (something like: changes peruse to per ruse).

NVDA’s speech dictionaries however are much more powerful than simple word replacement. The Add rule dialog also contains a checkbox to say whether or not you want the rule to be case sensitive (meaning that NVDA should care whether the characters are uppercase or lowercase, NVDA ignores case by default).

Finally, a set of radio buttons allows you to tell NVDA whether your pattern should match anywhere, should only match if it is a complete word or should be treated as a “Regular expression”.

In version v1.4 we also say hello to a new Scottish English voice named Rhona, available both as Colibri and High-Quality version.

We also extend our portfolio of Colibri voices by adding a colibri version of the Australian English voice Lisa, and the American Spanish voice Rodrigo.

After the latest additions, we can proudly announce that the Acapela TTS for NVDA add-on now provides 52 high-quality voices and 23 colibri voices.

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.

http://www.afb.org/info/living-with-vision-loss/using-technology/assistive-technology-videos/learn-nvda/1234

Enjoy it!

http://www.afb.org/info/living-with-vision-loss/using-technology/assistive-technology-videos/using-google-docs-and-drive-with-nvda/module-1-using-google-docs-and-drive-with-nvda/12345

You can download NVDA 2016.1 here: http://www.nvaccess.org/download/

You can learn more about what’s new in 2016.1 here: http://www.nvaccess.org/files/nvda/releases/2016.1/nvda_2016.1_changes.html

http://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2015-3-released/

Acapela for NVDA fully supports both NVDA 2015.3 and Windows 10.

You can download NVDA 2015.2 here:

http://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2015-2-now-available/

Enjoy it!