Power Talk

PowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for 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 synthesised computer voices that are provided with Windows 7, Vista and XP, and other voices are available. PowerTalk uses PowerPoint supplied with Microsoft Office to show the presentation.

PowerTalk was created in response to an open letter calling for help from a person with Asphasia. This appeared in Ability magazine, ‘Campaigning for Accessible IT’ published by John Lamb Media for the British Computer Society Disability Group in association with AbilityNet.