Re: Any Progress on an AI Related Screen-Reader?

I'm pretty sure that Samuel was talking about piper-tts.

After running `pip install piper-tts` you first have to install a voice 
model. You can hear samples of the voices here:

https://rhasspy.github.io/piper-samples/

The easiest way to actually download a voice model would be by using the 
piper.download_voices program, which you run like this:

$ python3 -m piper.download_voices

This will list the available voices. To filter for a particular 
language, you can use grep:

$ python3 -m piper.download_voices | grep '^en_'

Then use the same program to download the model you want by passing it 
the model name:

$ python3 -m piper.download_voices en_US-arctic-medium

Finally, you can test it using the piper command:

$ echo "Hello world!" | piper -m en_US-arctic-medium --output-raw | 
aplay -r 22050 -f S16_LE

A model can contain multiple speakers, so you might want to use 
something like:

$ echo "Hello world!" | piper -m en_US-arctic-medium -s 2 --output-raw | 
aplay -r 22050 -f S16_LE

I hope that helps.

On 8/7/25 14:18, Chime Hart wrote:
> Hi Jean: I am not a programmer nor developer, just a happy Debian SID blind
> user who would like additional screen-reader-and-voice options. My current
> Speakup screen-reader doesn't have an option to announce numbers as
> single-digits. Since I have well over 11thousand messages in my inbox, it would
> certainly save time hearing an index as single digits. Most early DOS
> screen-readers had this-and-other options. After Samuel's suggestion, I ran
> pipx install piper
> but its not obvious how to run it. Not even any man-page with a word "piper"
> Thanks in advance
> Chime
>