CereProc Makes Its Youthful Voices Commercially Available

Text-to-speech (TTS) vendor CereProc has added male Southern English and female Northern English accents to its range of English language synthetic voices, making them available for download and deployment across multiple platforms using Windows, Mac OS X, CereVoice Cloud, SDK or cServer products.

Freely accessible throughout the education sectors in England as part of the TechDis Voices initiative, the male Southern English and female Northern English voices—named Jack and Jess respectively—are now commercially available to developers or individuals seeking to integrate CereProc's patented voice creation technology in the English language with specific regional accents.

Having been recently added to CereProc's growing number of commercially available voices, the two TTS voices were formally launched last month in partnership with U.K. advisory service JISC TechDis for use in the education system throughout England. Supported by funding from the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS), the youthful male and female synthetic voices were developed by CereProc following intensive research and beta testing among active users to ascertain the most effective and well-received voices.

Designed to support individuals who require assistive and alternative communication aids for speech output and visually impaired users dependent on TTS technology to access digital resources, the voice software also serves as a tool to improve productivity when embedded into wider mainstream multichannel practices.

Available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, and compatible with screen readers and many other widely used applications, the Jack and Jess synthetic voices are 22khz for excellent clarity and naturalness.

"We're delighted to offer the Jack and Jess voices to a wider audience via the online store, cServer, SDK, and CereVoice Cloud services. They've had such a fantastic reception so far within the English education system, so we're pleased to add them to our armory of English language voices currently available for download," explained Paul Welham, CEO of CereProc, in a statement.