Y Speak

YSpeak is a free computer program for speech-disabled users. It is designed to assist in communicating in a variety of ways, reducing the input from the user to the minimum.

At its simplest, YSpeak will speak typed input, in any one of 25 different voices. Both male and female voices are provided. As the user types, YSpeak will speak the typed text either word-by-word, by line, by sentence, or when requested by the user. YSpeak will display the input text in any font, size, style, or color.

To allow someone else to read the text, YSpeak can also display the text inverted at the top of the screen, so that with the iBook display folded back, someone sitting opposite the user can read the text as it is input. To allow for a limited viewing angle, the text can also be displayed in negative.

YSpeak has two user-selectable built-in Dictionaries, one of the 1000 most-commonly used words in the English language, and one of over 25,000 words. In either Dictionary, as soon as the user types the first two letters of a word, YSpeak will invoke the Dictionaries to look up words starting with those letters, and display possible words in a separate window. The user can then select the word from this list to save typing the whole word.

YSpeak also tracks words as they are entered, and will attempt to predict the next word when one is entered. In doing this, it learns from the user.

YSpeak also has 5 separate word lists, each of which allows up to 35 words to be entered by typing a single key. Changing key lists is again invoked with a single key.