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>.

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.

We did our tests and the result is that Acapela TTS for NVDA is fully compatible with Windows 10 “Creators Edition” and no particular precaution needs to be taken during the upgrade process. Just follow the upgrade instructions from Microsoft, and happy creations!

Read more about the features included in Windows 10 update on the Microsoft blog.

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.

My name is Michael Bayus. I am totally blind and have been from birth. I am a Concert Organist and Church Musician working in the Sarasota area of Florida in the USA.

I use NVDA as my Screen Reader, and, of late my voice of choice is Ella. I don’t remember when I first heard Ella, it was probably around the beginning of 2013 when she was first released. I “fell in love” with her voice the first time I heard her, and I wished that there was a way I could have her reading for me.

The Infovox software was not possible for me, as I am a Church Musician on a small income, and Infovox was not something that I could afford. When the Addon for NVDA came out Ella was more within my reach.

I didn’t want a “Childs” voice, however, but I do like the voice I hear to be youthful. I surmised that If there was a way I could lower the pitch and frequency of the voice, I could make her sound “more grown up”. And, because I know something about how a Human voice works, I new that in addition to changing pitch and frequency, I would have to simulate in some way, the spreading of formants, and vocal tract elongation.

Well, I took the plunge, and bought the Addon package that includes Ella.

The first thing I did, was to lower the pitch of the voice from it’s default “32” setting in NVDA’s pitch scale in the Voice Menu, to “5”.

I found, to my gob-smacked astonishment, and my absolute delight that it worked. Not only did the pitch of her voice go down, but her formant dispersion spread was wider, and her vocal tract was lengthened.

I found the result to be so satisfactory and the illusion to be so believable that I no longer use any other of my voices. In fact, I have uninstalled all of them and now it’s Ella all the way.

She is now my new very best best friend.

It occurs to me, that this tip could be useful to any young girl who uses Ella to speak with her AAC device. And she could have the Ella voice follow her in to adulthood.

To that end, I am passing along a couple of audio files. One is Ella as she sounds originally, and the other is a grown up Ella.

Before you listen, allow me to make a small disclaimer. I don’t know who the young girl who recorded her voice for Ella is, so therefore, I just made it up about her having a dog, living with her brother Josh, and liking History in school. The grown up Ella, is entirely made up out of my imagination.

Happy listening, and I would like to know what you all think.

Little Girl Ella:

Grown-up Ella:

My thanks to Acapela Group for kindly posting this for me.

If there is a way that all of you could communicate with Acapela Group to tell me what you think, I would invite you to do so.

Also, you could friend me on Facebook.

I’m Michael Bayus who is blind, and I live in Sarasota Florida.

Try it today!

http://www.nvaccess.org/post/announcing-nvda-2015-4-release/

Users of Acapela TTS for NVDA can just upgrade to the latest version of NVDA 2015.4 without need of performing any operation. The Acapela TTS for NVDA plug-in will start working without any issue as soon as the new NVDA version has been installed.

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