ibook author supports read aloud

http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/

Accessibility built right in.

iBooks Author lets you create books that people with disabilities can read and experience. The table of contents, glossary, widgets, main text, and more are built to automatically take advantage of VoiceOver technology. Add accessibility descriptions to any widget or media — including movies and quizzes — so even those with vision impairments can use them.

http://www.apple.com/search/?q=voiceover&sec=ipad

Well what about read aloud feature? What is the difference between accessibility and read aloud?

I got some info I would like to share with those out their who want to desparatly add read aloud. It seems no one on here but me actually has something to say about this subject.

Yes, you can add read aloud to a completed iBook but you will need to add code (XML) to it. Here are some links on how to do it.

MAKING A FIXED LAYOUT BOOK:

http://authoradventures.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-create-fixed-layout-ibooks-p art.html

HOW TO PUT READ ALOUD INTO A FIXED LAYOUT BOOK:

http://www.elizabethcastro.com/epub/

http://www.amazon.com/Read-Aloud-iBooks-Elizabeth-Castro/dp/1611500176

She is the only person right now who actually tells you step by step how to do it. I bought her book from Barns and Noble (but you have to order it because its a print on demand book). Its great and the only book I could find on the subject.

Also, if you don't want to touch code at all, this site called Kitepress will do it for you. They even send it to itunes for you and put it on Amazon for you too and do a little promotion by putting your book under their publishing name so all books link to ones made using Kitepress. (Don't know if this is good or not but something to think about) But they take a percentage out of any of your profit when you sell it.

http://www.franklinjr.net/kitepress/kitepress-how-it-works/

Liz Castro is the girl to talk to about read aloud so check her out first.

Jake,

Accessibility is text to speech which has been available for all books since iBooks was announced as long as the text is not included as an image (images can also have an accessibility description so that they, too, can be read out loud with text to speech.)

Read aloud is not text to speech. It is embedded voiceover timed to read along with text highlights in the book. It is a feature that was added to fixed layout ePub books in December 2010 with iBooks 1.2.

iBooks Author books create a different file format and do not support the fixed layout ePub Read aloud narration features.

http://authoradventures.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/how-to-create-fixed-layout-ibooks -part.html

http://ebookarchitects.com/conversions/fixedlayout.php

Does that mean Author supports text to speech or not? - and How does text to speech, if supported, actually work?

It is supported by VoiceOver.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3598

Useful but nothing like the "read aloud" experience.

Yes... Totally of no use for me... My audio is my voice and continuous music of my pwn composition ... In fact the audio is created first...

VoiceOver is just a text-to-speech engine built in to the ipad for all text on the iPad. Read Aloud is for you to record and narrate your book with optional word by word highlighting (only for a fixed layout book).

Now if you didn't want to speak your narration but want the tex-to-speech to do it for you, you can download free TTS readers for mac that convert TTS reading to an audio file. Then you can add this to your book. However, the more realistic voices like Cepstral and AT&T natural voices don't work on mac, you would have to use Windows.

But you probably have a really good voice for narration. I don't like my voice but I decided to use mine instead of a robot TTS voice.

(With apologies to the OP for the side topic.)

Jake, FYI Cepstral voices work on Mac. https://www.cepstral.com/store/desktop-view

"Cepstral Personal voices bring your computer to life with a natural voice that speaks to you. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux our software is the ideal way to have your emails, documents or any speech enabled application read to you."

https://www.cepstral.com/support/faq/personal/mac_os_x.html

Thanks Daryl, I didn't know Cepstral was for mac. Maybe i'll try it.