Holiday Coast Credit Union Turns to ReadSpeaker for TTS

Australia's Holiday Coast Credit Union has turned to ReadSpeaker to provide text-to-speech technology for its online banking application.

"Accessing banking services and information online is critical for our members to manage their finances and maintain independence in their lives," said Holiday Coast CEO Neville Parsons in a statement. "On hearing of this technology, we quickly recognized it is a must-have for our members."

ReadSpeaker's text-to-speech technology enables any content, online or off-line, to highlight the text as it is being read. Web site visitors can fully customize their reading experience, including the reading speed and how the text is highlighted, either sentence-by-sentence or word-by-word.

Users can select text to only listen to certain parts of the page. In this case, a listen button pop-up will appear. The pop-up will follow when the user scrolls up and down the page. They can also have the page scroll automatically to follow the highlighted text. An enhanced text visibility option displays the current sentence at the bottom of the page, with a larger font size and simultaneous text highlighting.

"In 2016, customers expect services to be available online. For businesses, this creates major challenges, one of which is making their online content accessible to everyone, regardless of disability or literacy limitations," said Richard Ings, managing director of ReadSpeaker Australia and New Zealand, in a statement. "Holiday Coast Credit Union is the first Australian financial institutions to offer its online customers the option to listen to online content they may otherwise struggle to read. ReadSpeaker is delighted to partner with Holiday Coast Credit Union in making it easier for people who struggle with literacy to access their banking services online."

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