WordPress and Accessibility: Amazon Polly

You might have noticed that accessibility has become a huge talking point when it comes to WordPress and, more broadly, across web design and development as a whole. This shift towards mindful inclusivity has shown itself in multiple ways, from talks about accessibility dominating recent Wordcamps, to new plugins hitting the web that aim to make websites a more inclusive place for everybody.

One of these new aforementioned plugins is Amazon Polly, a text to speech plugin that gives the owner full control over both the language and the voice users will hear. The team behind Amazon Polly have the following to say:

Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Amazon Polly is a Text-to-Speech service that uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize speech that sounds like a human voice.

With dozens of lifelike voices across a variety of languages, you can select the ideal voice and build speech-enabled applications that work in many different countries.

You can test out the available voices and languages over on the Amazon Polly site and find out more about how the plugin can enhance the user experience on your own website.