Hi Alex,

 

Coincidentally, there has been a discussion this week on the ASHA AAC Discussion List about Arabic AAC software.  Here are some of the responses:

 

“It looks like we have found a solution. Paul Forbes from FRS Solutions has been working with us on the patient. The Acapela voices have a female arabic voice he is using and he found pages in Viking (I think) that are already in Arabic along with word prediction pages. Of course I have no idea what they say but Forbes took some screen shots of the pages and sent them to me. I am going to try them with her tomorrow. We will see but it looks positive we found a solution. We are trying to use them on his ComLink ST+. We are all crossing our fingers that it will work because it doesn't seem like there are many options out there that speak Arabic. I am surprised because there is a large population of people who speak Arabic. We will see tomorrow how she does with the pages and how Paul Forbes is doing putting it together.”

 

“You can contact AramediA (http://aramedia.com/tts.htm). They have
Text-to-Speech software for Arabic/English to synthetic speech. I believe
that you can use it on a notebook computer.”

 

 

I am working with a refugee family from Iraq here in Charlottesville.  We have a communication board translated in Arabic and may eventually use low tech aides such as a laser pointer and enlarged communication board. 

 

Has anyone found and used a direct Arabic text to speech application?  The individual only reads and speaks in Arabic.  The text to speech apps from Next-up and Acapella require knowledge of the Roman alphabet.

 

Thanks!

 

_A