When Leo Sciberras was studying for his Maltese O level, he had to find someone to read out poems from Qawsalla.
And when the young blind man, now 29, typed essays about the same poems, he could never know whether his text was grammatically correct.
But with the release of the first speech synthesiser, which transforms electronic text into spoken Maltese, the voices of Ġanni, Marija and Mikiel will be replacing the unclear, computerised English voice that was the only way blind people could access Maltese digital text.
The speech engine, released in July, was inaugurated yesterday at the Government’s IT agency by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.
People can download it for free from www.maltesespeech.com.
Crimsonwing, a company originally established in the UK, developed the synthesiser in a three-year project.
It will facilitate access to Maltese electronic text for readers with physical, sensory or cognitive needs.
This EU and Government funded project was initiated by the Foundation for Information Technology Accessibility (Fita) and the work was carried out entirely in Malta by a consortium of Maltese entities.
Michael Micallef and Leo Sciberras, who are blind, helped Fita test the synthesiser.
“Without this new synthesiser, writing in correct Maltese was not problematic but impossible. There was no way you could understand words like xogħol or għar,” Mr Sciberras said.
Mr Sciberras, who has been using English speech engines since 1998 and the Maltese one for the past eight months, said a lot of blind people felt more comfortable writing in English.
He believes the new speech engine will help his own IT students with their studies.
Mita and Fita chairman Godwin Grima said the engine will also bring people with a mobility impairment closer to the digital world including those who could not hold a newspaper or a book, others with dyslexia, the elderly, the illiterate and people with an intellectual disability.
“This purely made-in-Malta product will put the Maltese language on the same level as other languages that have their own speech synthesiser,” he added.