Speechcast, text-to-speech Podcasting

Speechcast automatically generates quality text-to-speech podcast functionality for web sites.
With the new resurgence of javascript and xml finding explosive growth, A large group of users may potentially find themselves left out of next generation websites -- the handicap. The Plone CMS community has always been conscious of this user audience -- speechcasting is an attempt to accomodate these users.
 
Dynamic websites such as those made with the Plone Content Management System lower the bar for non technical users to add and update content.  What about generating podcasts when new content on your website is updated?  No need for human involvement.  Its all automatic. 

The advancement in text-to-speech synthesis is remarkable.  The Mary text-to-speech system is one such system that is open source and  available free of charge.   This wonderful technology 

Three basic use-cases of initial release:
  • All website content will have a speak.mp3 view which will generate a  mp3 file that will contain the text of the specified content.  Every piece of content should have a speak.mp3 view that generates a mp3. 
  • One or more speechcast.xml files which will contain syndication information latest published content on the website, such as a News Item.  The xml file will point to the content's speak.mp3 view.
  • RSS functionality that points to the speak.mp3 files for syndicated content.
We hope to solicit feedback from the visually impaired about this product.  Since the Mary text-to-speech synthesis tool is service oriented it should be trivial for other websites to use this technique.

Requirements:

The speechcast software has been checked into the Collective, one of the largest peer-owned software repositories in the world.