New Text-to-Speech Options Offer Access to a Broader Market

While the opportunities in digital publishing keep growing, so do the challenges. It's no longer enough to get your content online and figure out how to market and sell it. The digital audience is getting broader and more diverse, which means you need to adapt to new ways of consuming content. Helping publishers meet these challenges is Tizra's mission, as demonstrated in recent enhancements like improved mobile support, enhanced online reading, and better ways to deliver digital first-content.

Now we're going a step farther, and adding text-to-speech capabilities through a partnership with ReadSpeaker, the worldwide leader in this area since 1999. Soon, you'll not only be able to reach users across a wide range of devices and platforms through Tizra, but will also be able to reach all levels of reading ability, different learning styles, and users with visual and other disabilities.

This partnership is a great fit not only because ReadSpeaker's commitment to technical excellence and user-centered design matches our own, but because both companies share the belief that the best way to reach the widest audience is through the the web. The web's open standards mean our systems work together easily and smoothly, and offer the best possible compatibility with popular reading devices and platforms.

How it Works
Readers will start the text-to-speech feature by clicking on a Listen button within the Tizra-hosted content, launching the ReadSpeaker keyboard-controlled audio player. ReadSpeaker's natural-sounding text-to-speech is offered in 32 different languages to address all your audiences, and highlights text as it is read to promote better understanding — especially critical for educational and medical publishers.

Text-to-speech features include:

Multiple languages and multiple voices per language
Customizable reading area, order and speed
Text highlighting with customizable colors and segmenting by sentence or word
Pronunciation dictionary
WCAG 2.0 compliance

By offering text-to-speech capabilities, you'll be able to extend the reach of your online content to audience segments that are otherwise underserved, including those with visual impairments, learning disabilities including dyslexia, as well as reluctant readers and those who simply prefer audio consumption.

Get Text-to-Speech
Text-to-speech is rolling out to current customers over the next two months and will be an available option for all new Tizra customers. Existing Tizra customers can upgrade to incorporate text-to-speech capabilities for their content. Contact Tizra to learn more.

Comments

Tizra Upgrade Provides a Crisper, More Interactive E-Reading Experience

In the print world, when you think about a reader’s user experience, you consider factors like the size and weight of a book, paper quality, typeface, layout and design. Moving to digital, some of these factors still hold true, but others are replaced with concerns such as speed, intuitive controls, cross-platform compatibility, plus as with any human interface, a host of intangibles. We’re always working to make the Tizra reading experience crisper, easier, and less distracting, because happier readers mean happier publishers. Tizra reader upgrade makes it easy to enhance content with interactive lightbox effects. The update builds on Tizra’s ability to provide usability and compatibility across all the most popular web browsers and viewing devices, and is now available to all Tizra customers. Enhancements include: Speed -- e-reading should be as crisp, fast and simple as turning a page. Your readers are not going to tolerate delays waiting for cont...

See Tizra at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Guten Tag! If you are attending the Frankfurt Book Fair and thinking about your digital publishing strategy, we’d like to meet with you to tell you about all the great things happening at Tizra including: Our recent partnership with HighWire to power their Folio ebook platform (see below) How Goodheart-Willcox uses Tizra to create digital first content Exciting new features such as an improved e-reading experience , new mobile responsive design templates , and new APIs for faster uploading and better design integration Plus, some big news we can't tell you about until the show! Find Tizra at: The American Collective Stand Hall 8.0 S31 or email us at carlos.martinez@tizra.com to arrange a meeting. Please join us in congratulating HighWire on the launch of Folio! Built on the HighWire Open Platform and leveraging Tizra for ebook integration, Folio is a flexible, scalable, ebook solution, providing a user-friendly, intuitive reading experience t...

The Secret to Online Ebook Discovery

We have talked about three of the 10 Factors to Consider when Developing your Digital Publishing Strategy , including audience , selling direct , and monetization . Today, we tackle discovery. The way readers discover new books and content is changing and this is happening not just in the consumer trade publishing business. Discovery is moving from bookstores and face-to-face conversations to online discovery and referrals through social networks, and, as a recent study from Bowker Market Research shows, this is true even of ebooks. In fact, O'Reilly Tools of Change published findings in 2013 to show that 39 percent of their sample discovered books online, 27 percent through an online publication, and 14 percent through social media. So what does this mean for publishers? It means rethinking your marketing strategy to focus more on online discovery. Here are 5 Strategies for Improving your Online Ebook Discovery: 1. Search Engine Optimization - a tric...

Tizra Blog

Search This Blog