Presentation as far as I have encountered are the most boring things one have to go through with people usually turning up slides and simply talking what’s written on it. Well that said if you are on the other side of the table listening to the presenter.

Now imagine yourself being the one who is giving the presentation to 10 people a day, it could be a sales presentation or a school presentation. The amount of talking you could keep doing would surely sore your throat.

Well if you have been doing that for quite sometime now there is relief with a software called PowerTalk ^[1] which automatically converts Powerpoint presentations into speech. The software will automatically read the text and as it slides up the screen. The software can also be detect hidden text associated with images and speak it out.

Originally created keeping people in mind with sight problems I believe this software would be quite useful for people who give the same presentation over and over and would want to elaborate on the points rather than just mugging it from the screen. The other benefit this software provides is that it comes absolutely free without you having to shell a extra penny for it.

Here are some of the features of the software

• 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;
• Helps you access presentations when there is no speaker and you are partially sighted;
• Creates engaging school activities such as reading stores created by students;
• Simple to use as you just select a presentation and it runs in PowerPoint as usual;
• Speaks the text on any presentation and uses standard Windows speech;
• Waits for text to appear and animation effects to play before speaking;
• Will speak hidden ‘alternative text’ for pictures, graphics shapes and text;
• Lets you add instant narration to presentations without the need to record speech;
• Is a useful tool for testing presentation accessibility when using a screen reader;

If you are bored speaking out all the times or have difficulties in sight then this is one of the must have softwares for you. PowerTalk is developed and provided by Open Source Assistive Technology Software ^[2].

Download PowerTalk ^[3] [Windows Only]