Hi Robert, Marie, and others, In the U.S. you purchase the Acapela group's voices, which are sold for the Mac as Infovox/iVox voices distributed by Assistiveware, from Origin Instruments. When you navigate from the Assistiveware pages to do a purchase in the U.S., you're directed to the Origin Instruments page at this link:
http://orin.com/ec/infovox_ivox/ However, this page only has settings for the most popular language packages (like French and Spanish). They sell all the products described on the Assistiveware site pages, but you have to email or call in for items that don't show up on their site, like languages such as Greek or Russian. When you purchase from the Origin Instruments page you do not go through the Kagi payment pages that some list members have complained about, but you can just call Origin Instruments directly or send them an email. Here's the contact information: Origin Instruments Corporation 854 Greenview Drive Grand Prairie, Texas 75050-2438 USA Voice: 972-606-8740 FAX: 972-606-8741 email: supp...@orin.com As Anne mentioned, the Heather voice is included in every Infovox/iVox language package, so you get this if you buy the British English voice pack, for example. Additional language packs are $49.50. You can also buy a household license that allows you to use the voice packs on up to 5 computers for $149 (non-Scandinavian languages -- this is the price if you purchase one voice pack with the household license instead of a single user license). If you purchased a single user license before, you can also buy something called a household extension license ($79 for non-Scandinavian languages). You can also buy the GhostReader+Infovox/iVox bundle (apparently for any language, so you could get the French version of GhostReader, the French Infovox/iVox voices, and the Heather English voice and use all the French voices in GhostReader plus Heather, Alex, and any of your system voices). GhostReader is not designed for the visually impaired market, but may be of special interest to low-vision users or users who work in multiple languages. The voices are compressed versions of the Acapela voices that can only be used within GhostReader to read web pages, mail, or documents while the Infovox/iVox voices can be used system-wide with VoiceOver. GhostReader can also use any of your system voices. You can switch to different language voices on the fly with keyboard shortcuts, record spoken selections to sound files, and it has some nice features like skipping paragraphs or sentences or repeating text. However, you're using the GhostReader interface and not VoiceOver, so you don't have the same flexibility in navigating through web pages, interacting, selecting links, etc. and it's a bit tricky to start working with this with no vision. Anne may have more comments about this. There's an undocumented feature that allows you switch voices in applications like TextEdit if a control sequence specific to GhostReader is inserted. Since there is a "Value bundle" of Infovox/iVox + GhostReader for $109 (non-Scandinavian language of your choice, single user license) I thought it was worth mentioning GhosReader. I didn't find out about a lot of these options until after I had made purchases, and in some cases the options were not available at the time I purchased. This composite information is the result of reading through the Assistiveware pages, the Origin Instrument pages, phone questions to Origin Instruments, and answers to queries on the list supplied by David Niemeijer of Assistiveware. To search for more information in the archives, try using Infovox instead of Acapela. HTH Cheers, Esther Robert Carter wrote: > >Hi, > >The Acapela package is $99. > >Robert Carter >On Jul 24, 2009, at 7:05 PM, Marie Howarth wrote: > >> >> how much are these packages? :) >> >> On Jul 25, 2009, at 12:38 AM, Mike Arrigo wrote: >> >>> >>> She is actually part of the u.s. or u.k. english package. You would >>> need to purchase infovox ivox, which includes one language, and you >>> can add other languages if you want. I have the u.s. and U.K. voices, >>> and they work great with voiceover. >>> On Jul 24, 2009, at 2:20 PM, Robert Carter wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> I am wanting to purchase the Acapela text to speech voice, Heather, >>>> for my Mac. I was looking at assistiveware.com and it wasn't clear >>>> to >>>> me what to purchase. >>>> >>>> Does anybody know how to get Heather and how much does she cost? >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> >>>> Robert Carter >>>> >>>>> >>> >>> >>>> >> >> >> > > > >> > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
