There have been recent updates to make the tool-bar more robust and compatible with browsers and the results have meant increased access to Google docs, Facebook (except Chrome at present) and Twitter – the text to speech and word prediction work when you change the background look and feel using the painter’s palate  (change page style).   The colour overlay can be toggled on an off for all websites and works with click through so you can go to another site even if you have the coloured overlay in place.

Work on the style sheet issues has also meant that the dialog boxes in ATbar do not always take on the style sheet of the target website.  This also saves time when implementing new plugins and adding new things to the tool-bar as there are less style clashes so it is easier to customise the tool-bar for particular websites.

The latest version of the Festival Speech Synthesis System is now available as an option on the ATbar Market place website. The Festival plugin works in a similar way to the commercial Acapela TTS plugin.

ATbar now works with all the free speech synthesisers such as eSpeak and Mbrola but the quality of some of the voices is still a challenge for most listeners.