Background
The fact that most of the content on the Internet today is text based creates many problems for a lot of people. Many web browsing devices are not optimal for displaying large amounts of text content due to their limited screen size, and this problem will only increase with the growing popularity of web phones and other portable devices. Text based content also creates problems for over 20% of the Western world's population that suffer from some kind of reading disability not to mention the even higher percentages in other parts of the world. Speech enabling online text content makes it easier for many users to better understand the information that they have access to on the Internet.
ReadSpeaker strives to solve these problems by proposing innovative and useful online text to speech applications.
Major Milestones
1999 : The founding team gives birth to the first-ever speech enabling web based service in the world, named ReadSpeaker.
2001 : ReadSpeaker SayIt is launched. It now becomes easy for web sites to add a simple Listen button so that users can listen to web sites as well as read them.
2003 : ReadSpeaker products are sold outside of Scandinavia starting with the UK.
2004 : Launch of ReadSpeaker Navigator and then ReadSpeaker XT. Now web sites can offer an audio toolbar to their visitors so that they can listen to a selected text, the main page content or the whole page including navigation.
2006 : ReadSpeaker products are now used in Germany, Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, US and Japan.
2008 : The company VoiceCorp is set-up to join the development, sales, management, hosting, support and innovation departments behind the ReadSpeaker products under one roof.
2008 : Launch of the new ReadSpeaker web-based products ReadSpeaker Enterprise and ReadSpeaker proReader that make it faster, more convenient, and simpler for users to listen to web sites.
2009 : The ReadSpeaker webReader app is launched, targeted at small web sites and blogs. Now it is easy for smaller web sites and blogs to speech enable their text content.
2009 : ReadSpeaker products go mobile with the launch of ReadSpeaker audioMobile. Now users can listen to content directly from their iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch), Android, RIM BlackBerry and other J2ME compatible devices.
2009 : More than 5000 customers use our ReadSpeaker products in Europe, North and South America, and Asia with millions of people listening to web content every month.
2010 : ReadSpeaker goes deeper in creating specific products for reading online documents and web forms with the launch of ReadSpeaker docReader and ReadSpeaker formReader. The VoiceCorp company name changes into ReadSpeaker.
2011 : ReadSpeaker Enterprise is updated with the new Embedded Highlighting add-on which now can be used on iPhone/iPad with a HTML5 player.
What we believe in
- It should be as easy to listen to the web as printing or sharing a web page.
- We believe in the benefits of web-based products. Our ReadSpeaker products are all web-based. That means:
- No downloads are required
- They are easy to implement
- They can be accessed from any location
- They work with all browsers (IE 6 and up, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, Chrome, Lynx, etc)
- They are always up-to-date
- They are secure and backed-up
- Accessibility, device independence, code validation are all important and we have our views on them.
- Our best word-of-mouth is what our customers think of us. We always aim to give them quick, efficient and to the point support.
