ReadSpeaker Announces Signature Partnership With Blackboard

DEDHAM, Massachusetts, March 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

ReadSpeaker is pleased to announce a new Signature Partnership with Blackboard, the world's leading education technology company, which will provide both educators and learners with new tools to excel in the classroom. ReadSpeaker's leading text-to-speech technology allows students to experience content on their terms, with natural voices in a broad range of widely used languages. Speech-enabled content improves accessibility, increases engagement, and provides students with a low-stress, tech-friendly study tool.

For educators, ReadSpeaker's Signature Partnership with Blackboard provides another important tool to promote Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Every student learns in their own way, through a combination of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning. The primary goal of UDL is to make learning more adaptable and accessible for all students.

Text to speech is an important pillar of UDL, as one of the most straightforward ways for auditory learners to consume content. Rather than reading through a long, challenging document, auditory learners can simply listen to content on-demand. In addition to benefiting those who prefer to learn by listening, text to speech improves accessibility for students with literacy challenges, second-language learners, students with visual impairments, and students with certain learning disabilities.

By partnering with Blackboard, ReadSpeaker brings its text-to-speech services to one of the premier platforms for online and classroom learning. Students will enjoy the flexibility and performance benefits of learning in their preferred format, while educators will have another powerful tool to bring UDL into their classrooms.

"Blackboard is committed to improving accessibility for our learners," said Katie Blot, SVP of Corporate Strategy & Industry Relations for Blackboard. "This powerful partnership is one more way we are helping make learning more adaptable and accessible for educators and learners.  We look forward to continuing to work with ReadSpeaker to bring text to speech to courses around the world."

Steve Moore, ReadSpeaker General Manager, North America, expects great things from the continued partnership: "We're pleased to expand our successful partnership with Blackboard, already starting with our sponsorship of Blackboard's Teaching & Learning Conference in the Netherlands in April, and look forward to bringing streamlined, accessible speech-enabled text to more classrooms worldwide."

About ReadSpeaker (http://www.readspeaker.com)

ReadSpeaker® is one of the worldwide market leaders in providing text-to-speech solutions. In 1999, ReadSpeaker pioneered the first-ever speech-enabling solution for websites followed by the first web-based platform for producing digital talking books.

Today, the company's text-to-speech and document viewing services are used in 60+ countries and millions of users worldwide every month. ReadSpeaker speech-enables content in 40+ languages and 130+ voices. The company provides a portfolio of text-to-speech and document viewing solutions for websites, mobile sites, mobile apps, connected devices, digital books, e-learning materials, documents, forms, and all kind of other digital environments.

More than 10.000 education, corporate, media, government, and non-profit customers around the world use the company's text-to-speech and document viewing solutions.

About Blackboard Inc. 

Blackboard is the world's leading education technology company. We challenge conventional thinking and advance new models of learning in order to reimagine education and make it more accessible, engaging and relevant to the modern-day learner and the institutions that serve them. In partnership with our customers and partners in higher education and K-12 as well as corporations and government agencies around the world, our mission is to help every learner achieve their full potential by inspiring a passion for lifelong learning. For more information about Blackboard, follow us on Twitter @Blackboard.

SOURCE ReadSpeaker