[Last updated 3 August 2010]

OS X only offers US English text-to-speech voices, and they are not of a very high quality. Apple's voices are OK to listen to for short passages like getting your computer to speak the time, but if you use text-to-speech very much you'll probably want to purchase a higher quality voice. Leopard's "Alex" voice is a great improvement on the ones available before Leopard came out, but even that voice is jarring and mechanical to listen to for more than a few minutes and only offers American English. So what are your alternatives for text to speech?

Note: "System Voices" mean that the voice can be used in any program that has text-to-speech ability and can be used with VoiceOver or to speak selected text. You won't see them as a separate program, the voice will appear in the list of voices on your computer.

Cepstral

Implementation: System Voices.
Languages: US English, UK English, Italian, Canadian French, German, Americas Spanish, and some odd "character" voices including a dog barking!
Compatibility: 10.3.9-10.6.*.
Trials available: Demos for all Cepstral voices are available online and you can download and try the voices before you purchase them. There's no time limit on the trial but they insert messages in the audio output about the voice not being licensed.
Price: Around US$30 for each voice, see online store.

AssistiveWare InfoVox iVox

Implementation: System Voices.
Languages: American English, British English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, French Canadian, German, Greek, Icelandic (not with Snow Leopard), Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (American), Swedish, and Turkish. All non-American English languages include one American English female voice as a bonus.
Compatibility: 10.3.9-10.6.*.
Trials available: Samples for all InfoVox iVox voices are available online and you can download and try the voices for 30 days before you purchase them.
Price: Priced per language, most languages having multiple voices. From US$99 for the first language, see price details.

ConvenienceWare GhostReader

Implementation: Read selected text in programs, GhostReader program can read and export to iTunes tracks, and other features.
Languages: American English, Arabic, British English, Czech, Finnish, French, Canadian French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, American Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian, Russian, Turkish and Swedish. GhostReader itself is localized in English, French, Italian and German.
Compatibility: 10.3.9-10.6.*.
Trials available: Samples for all GhostReader voices are available online and you can download and try GhostReader for 15 days before purchase.
Price: From US$39.95 for one language with discounts for just about everything, see price details.

Cereproc

Implementation: System Voices.
Compatibility: Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard.
Languages: Scottish English, American English, Southern English (Southern England, not Southern USA), West Midlands/Black Country (Black Speech), German, Austrian-German, French.
Trials Available: Samples only are available on the website.
Price: £s;29.99 per voice.

Speechissimo

Speechissimo has officially been discontinued and is no longer available. This entry is left for reference.

「ドキュメントトーカ」 / DTalker

Note: Website is in Japanese only - details translated for me by a friend. I suggest that you consult the website yourself for details.
Implementation: System Voices, VoiceOver implementation (?), DTalker editor.
Compatibility: 10.4-?.
Languages: Japanese (8 voices), English.
Trials available: Samples available on website, trial version for download.
Price: 9,975 yen (approx US$100) for full program. Slightly less for download-only version.

MacKEY5

Implementation: Text-to-speech within program. Also provides other features such as Chinese fonts, dictionary, Pinyin input, etc.
Languages: Mandarin.
Compatibility: 10.2.4-?
Trials available: Download and try MacKEY5 for 30 days before purchase.
Price: US$195.00

eSpeak Macintosh Installer

Implementation: Text-to-speech within eSpeak Mac Utility program. System Voice planned for future.
Languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Cantonese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Kurdish, Latvian, Lojban, Macedonian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese, Welsh. The quality of some of these is very low, others are better. The Languages page has more complete information and will always be up to date.
Compatibility: ?
Trials available: N/A
Price: Free - eSpeak is open source software that anybody can use free of charge.

This is all the Mac OS X voices I am aware of at the moment, with all the relevant information I can find about them. If you have more up to date information or know of any voices in any languages that I've missed, please let me know so I can update the list.

- Ricky Buchanan

The software referred to here has been superseded by a newer product. Please read the article about the new MacSpeech Dictate software instead.

SALEM, NH, November 30, 2007 - MacSpeech, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of iListen 1.8, an update to the Macintosh industry's leading speech recognition solution, now compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard."

iListen 1.8 includes new commands to support the new TextEdit and Finder in Mac OS X 10.5, and Safari 3. In addition, significant enhancements to the Voice Launcher, a few of which are Leopard-only, and to the Web Favorites command sets are included in version 1.8.

The iListen 1.8 update is also a maintenance release that fixes reported issues and adds other refinements to the Mac speech recognition solution. The iListen 1.8 update is available free of charge to all registered iListen 1.7 (and higher) customers, directly from the MacSpeech web site.

I wonder if the recognition is improved?

Website: [msd]

- Ricky Buchanan

[msddisclaim]

[msdbanner]

This article is about an application which is unfortunately no longer available. I have left the article here for reference purposes only.

Move attempts to deal with the problems that blind users face with drag and drop. Move will move the selected items in the finder to a chosen directory. It will then open that directory and make it the front most window in the Finder. Selecting the directory is done with a standard put file dialog.

This will also be useful for switch users and anyone who has trouble with the mouse.

- Ricky Buchanan

[Update 2 September 2008: This software is no longer available. There is no equivalent software currently available to my knowledge. - Ricky]

MaxiMice takes the clicks out of scrolling views and dragging windows. Move the mouse pointer near the edge of a view and it scrolls. Move it closer to the edge and the scrolling speeds up. Or just hold down a modifier key to move or scroll the window under the cursor.

This software is not new, it was last updated in 2003, but it still works file on my computer at least. I doubt that it would work on an intel-based system.

- Ricky Buchanan

This article is about an application which is unfortunately no longer available. I have left the article here for reference purposes only.

CLIDrag allows drag-and-drop operations to be initiated from the command line. It supports dragging of a number of different data types including files, text and images. It has a flexible command line interface and an attractive appearance. It also allows the command line to change the contents of the clipboard.

This software was developed in 2004 and has not been updated since, but it seems that it could be useful for people who have difficulty using the mouse or other pointer device, especially the geeky ones!

- Ricky Buchanan