Readplease

This may be seven years old, and it may be cut and paste, but I think that this is still one friendliest pieces of text-to-speech other there. Its beauty is a simple download, easy to access interface, large symbols, and control of the key elements, namely speech, font size, it has several voices, and word highlighting. You can adjust the pause between paragraphs (to consolidate your thoughts) and adjust colours (e.g. for highlighting). You could even have it start on startup, and read your own text. How about "I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you." In case you do not recognise it, it was spoken by the computer Hal in Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey.

ReadPlease 2003