AT&T continuously invests in innovative speech technologies so that businesses worldwide can optimize interactions and achieve a better Return on Communications in terms of reach and efficiency. Examples of applications and services being optimized by AT&T Natural Voices TTS Engine today include an e-mail reader that provides e-mail access over the phone; a real-time notification and alerting service; a system that converts ASCII text messages into wav files for broadcast over local area networks; text readers that provide greater accessibility to any content on an individual s computer; a voice-enabled directory search engine; and a VoiceXML development gateway.

AT&T Natural Voices TTS Engine can uniquely support the addition of many languages to any and all applications, including U.S. English, German, Latin American Spanish, U.K. English, Parisian French, and many more foreign languages to come - always with the highest standards of quality and intelligibility.

All editions of the TTS engine include both a female and male U.S. English voice and support SAPI 4.0, 5.0 and 5.1, the SSML component of VoiceXML, and JSAPI interface standards.

One TTS engine supports multiple languages. The AT&T Natural Voices Desktop Text-to-Speech Engine offers some enhanced pronunciation features; for example, when the engine reads Dr. Smith lives on Ocean Dr. , it can determine that the first Dr. should be pronounced doctor and the second Dr. should be pronounced drive . In addition, all of the names of the FORTUNE 500 companies, numerous business-related terms and the names of international currencies have near-perfect pronunciations.

AT&T Natural Voices TTS Engine is tremendously flexible. It can pronounce words exactly the way you want it to. The engine includes language- and voice-specific custom dictionaries that enable users to define the pronunciation of certain words. Users can also determine how the engine reads certain acronyms and abbreviations, and change the speaking rate, volume and voice.