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<title>Tell It Like It Is: Text-to-Speech (TTS)</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet" media="speech" href="css/synth.css" />
<link rel="pronunciation" href="lexicon/en.pls" type="application/pls+xml" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="pronunciation" href="lexicon/fr.pls" type="application/pls+xml" hreflang="fr" />
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<p data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[1]/p[22]">Now that we know how to globally define pronunciation rules, let’s turn to how we
can override and/or define behavior at the markup level.</p>
<h3 class="title" id="_ssml" data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[2]/h3">SSML</h3>
<p data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[2]/p[1]">Although PLS files are a great way to globally set the pronunciation of words,
their primary failing is that they aren’t a lot of help where context matters in
determining the correct pronunciation. Leave the pronunciation of heteronyms to
chance, for example, and you’re invariably going to be disappointed by the
result; the cases where context might not significantly influence comprehension
(e.g., an English heteronym like “mobile”), are going to be dwarfed by the ones
where it does.</p>
<p data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[2]/p[2]">By way of example, when talking about PLS files I mentioned bass the instrument
and bass the fish as an example of how context influences pronunciation. Let’s
take a look at this problem in practice now:</p>
<pre class="screen" data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[2]/pre[1]"><p>The guitarist was playing a bass that was shaped like a <span ssml:ph="b&s">bass</span>.</p></pre>
<p data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[2]/p[3]">Human readers won’t have much of a struggle with this sentence, despite the
contrived oddity of it. A guitarist is not going to be playing a fish shaped
like a guitar, and it would be strange to note that the bass guitar is shaped
like a bass guitar. From context you’re able to determine without much pause
that we’re talking about someone playing a guitar shaped like a fish.</p>
<p data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[2]/p[4]">All good and simple. Now consider your reaction if, when listening to a synthetic
speech engine pronounce the sentence, you heard both words pronounced the same
way, which is the typical result. The process to correct the mistake takes you
out of the flow of the narrative. You’re going to wonder why the guitar is
shaped like a guitar, admit it.</p>
<p data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[2]/p[5]">Synthetic narration doesn’t afford you the same ease to move forward and back
through the prose that visual reading does, as words are only announced as
they’re voiced. The engine may be applying heuristic tests to attempt to better
interpret the text for you behind the scenes, but you’re at its mercy. You can
back up and listen to the word again to verify whether the engine said what you
thought it did, but it’s an intrusive process that requires you to interact with
the reading system. If you still can’t make sense of the word, you can have the
reading system spell it out as a last resort, but now you’re train of thought is
completely on understanding the word.</p>
<p data-origPath="/html/body/section/section[2]/p[6]">And this is an easy example. A blind reader used to synthetic speech engines
would probably just keep listening past this sentence having made a quick
assumption that the engine should have said something else, for example, but
that’s not a justification for neglect. The problems only get more complex and
less avoidable, no matter your familiarity. And that you’re asking your readers
to compensate is a major red flag you’re not being accessible, as
mispronunciations are not always easily overcome depending on the reader’s
disability. It also doesn’t reflect well on your ebooks if readers turn to
synthetic speech engines to help with pronunciation and find gibberish, as I
touched on in the last section.</p>
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