Automatic speech for PowerPoint presentations. PowerTalk automatically speaks Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. For presenters who find speaking difficult, audiences containing people with visual impairments and fun educational uses. Uses synthesised computer speech provided with Windows.

You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic Text To Speech programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.
Speech is provided by the standard synthesised computer voices that are provided with Windows.

PowerTalk Features:
1. Aids you if you have difficulty speaking or you have an audience that contains people with sight problems (visual impairments, low vision or blind) or who have dyslexia;
2. Helps you access presentations when there is no speaker and you are partially sighted;
3. Creates engaging school activities such as reading stores created by students;
4. Simple to use as you just select a presentation and it runs in PowerPoint as usual;
5. Speaks the text on any presentation and uses standard Windows speech;
6. Waits for text to appear and animation effects to play before speaking;
7. Will speak hidden 'alternative text' for pictures, graphics shapes and text;
8. Lets you add instant narration to presentations without the need to record speech;
9. Is a useful tool for testing presentation accessibility when using a screen reader;

There are a number of ways to get PowerTalk to narrate a PowerPoint Presentation (.ppt file) or Slide Show (.pps file):
Note: ppt and pps files are identical except for the ppt/pps part of the filename, the difference being what happens when they are opened. A .ppt file may be be saved in PowerPoint as a .pps file or else a .ppt file can be simply renamed as a .pps.
1. Open a Slide Show. See below for details.
2. Right click on a Presentation or Slide Show and select 'Narrate with PowerTalk'.
3. Drag a Slide Show file onto a PowerPoint program shortcut.
4. Browse to a Presentation or Slide Show using the dialog that appears when launching PowerTalk from the Start menu. The initial folder used may be specified using the shortcut 'Start in' property or adding the folder name as a parameter.
5. Create a specific shortcut. Specify PowerTalk.exe as the target and the presentation file as a parameter(e.g. "C:\Program Files\PowerTalk\PowerTalk.exe" "MyShow.ppt").

By default PowerTalk will narrate Slide Shows when they are opened outside of PowerPoint (e.g. by double-clicking in Windows Explorer). Slide Show files may still be shown without narration by opening within PowerPoint or right-clicking on them and selecting 'show'. During installation there is an option to disable this feature and another option to enable it for Presentations.

Controlling Speech.
Text can be entered on a slide in either a single text box or split into multiple boxes and these are handled slighty differently.

Requirements:
* PowerPoint 2000 (or later)
* Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) 5.1

The license of this software is Free, you can free download and free use this presentation software.