Suggested text-to-speech (TTS) freeware:
'DeskBot' is a clipboard & text reader featuring the 'Microsoft Agent' animated characters (that were previously seen in MS Office).

Homepage:
http://www.deskbot.com/

Downloads:
http://www.msagentring.org/msagentring/setup.aspx

Google's online machine translation service has an outstanding multi-lingual text-to-speech engine, which you can try here:
http://translate.google.com/

Thanks for the reply. I can't be here everyday and have missed some giveaways I really need. I was just suggesting because I don't know the GAOTD people don't work with the software makers andd the whole acessibility field is an important one to me as I used to lobby for handicapped people. Even prople who work with the blind don't use or know of these softwares so I am angry about the matter. Wide range of subjects including misunderstanding the handicalled as special issues arise because of the inavailability of features specially for them rather than they being "special". I am one of them, which doesn't change matters or make the lack of knowlege of the issues and less expensive or easy to swallow. Thanks for the suggestions I will try them out. Funny I never searched Sourceforge.

I'm sure you can get some free voices for these softwares. in fact I'm certain that a community member posted a link to some downloads somewhere in these forums, but I can't remember the thread. I downloaded them at the time as I wanted to add more voices to the ones that were provided with the text to voice apps we were given via the giveaway project.

As for Dragon, I love the way it 'learns' the more you use it.
Thanks for reminding me what the Win 7 text to voice app was called. :)

Windows ships with a limited screen reader called "Narrator" but it suffers from the same problem as the freeware readers - the available free voices are dreadful. You'd be much better off pursuing one of the commercial products, such as "Dragon Naturally Speaking" that Whiterabbit mentioned. I think some of the commercial products offer trial versions for download.

Once you get a decent voice then you can use Balabolka and Project Gutenberg to create an almost unlimted number of audio books.

For text, it's tough to beat NoSquint for Firefox when browsing. Otherwise, there are a number of screen magnifiers available but first try adjusting your screen. In XP, the base DPI is 90, large is 120 but you can increase it up to 200 (just make sure the text fits on the screen). And use the lowest resolution that's viable.

here's a simple & free one that works fine for my needs:
http://simplettsreader.sourceforge.net/
even see it in action on 'the tube' @
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9tObptv-Fs
hope it helps-
if not, here is a list of them I ran into:
http://www.babelfish.org/tts-free.htm

Hi ya_nova, we have had text to Voice software in the past on the giveawy project. Unfortunately the owners cannot just pick and choose the software that's being given away. If you own Win 7 there is a text to voice softare included in the package though I've forgotten how to access it. I use an older version of Dragon Naturally Speaking, which is great. Check out EBay for ealier versions of the software; you may even be able to purchase earlier versions from the developer at knocked down prices. It's well worth approaching them and asking.

We need, because there is a large community of computers users with accessibility issues some freeware for them. Text-To-Voice for me because I have started to develop cataracts. and I have many good years as a user, I feel a little left out by GAOTD and the software community as ttv software is so expensive. Other softwares would improve the computer experience for color-blind, custom text for accessibility and so on. I know I would use such softwares. WHat do you think?

Never mind - I don't know what the problem was, but I d/l the file again, and there were three files (readme, setup, activate) instead of two (setup, readme) in the first d/l. Worked perfectly this time.

The current game of the day (Dragon) will not allow me to install. The setup.exe returns the error:

"Giveaway is not yet available, please try again later (code 0021290)

Windows XP SP2
IE 7
No download manager