Automated Podcasts of Text Blogs
I just discovered Talkr:
a service that allows you to listen to your favorite text-only news sources rather than read them. If you can point us to an RSS or Atom feed (a machine-readable version of your favorite blog or news source) we will convert that feed from text to speech.Talkr can also provide you with a podcast of your favorite news sources. This means that you can plug your MP3 player into your home computer once a day and Talkr will provide you with hours of audio content with no additional work on your part. Talkr will keep tabs on your feeds and send audio to your computer as those audio files become available.
Though I’m really not interested in creating a podcast per se (which is why I haven’t added an MP3-only feed to my sidebar, which is a possibility), having an audio option along with the text certainly makes a blog more accessible to blind or low-vision users, so I think it’s a good idea.
I’m going to start test-driving Talkr links in my posts (see the one at the bottom of this post, but this example does a better job of illustrating how Talkr handles a longer post with images). Do let me know if you find them more annoying than helpful.
