Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

Re:Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 b... by warpech on Thursday September 05, 2019 @02:43AM (#20884408)

Here's an online version, I bet it sounds similar as the original program: https://eeejay.github.io/espeak/emscripten/espeak.html

There is a range slider that maxes as 450, which is the maximum speed according to the manual.

I tried listening to a Wikipedia article at 450, I am so amazed you can comprehend that. Perhaps that's equivalent of me visually scanning the text instead of reading, however when I do that, I tend to focus on interesting parts for long stretches of time. With espeak, how do you focus? Can you pause it at will?

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Re:Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 b... by CAMLORN on Thursday September 05, 2019 @12:25PM (#20888259)

Screen readers have a lot of commands for reading different sized chunks of content. In general there's probably around 50 keystrokes I use on a daily basis. It's not as straightforward as reading from top to bottom, though it can be. I can usually do a Wikipedia article without pausing at 450 or so.

If anyone is curious, here is the NVDA keystroke reference: https://www.nvaccess.org/files/nvdaTracAttachments/455/keyco...

As an interesting sidenote, screen readers have to co-opt capslock as a modifier key, then there's fun with finding keyboards that are happy to let you hold capslock+ctrl+shift+whatever.

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