difuzevox – a natural, neural voice for Descriptive Video, « made in » Canada
Due to an increasing demand in video description, difuze now offers a neural voice solution, specifically designed with the Canadian market in mind, to help broadcasters offer accessible media to the visually impaired.
In keeping with the importance of having a human sounding voice for Descriptive Video, difuze was faced with having to respond to its broadcaster and clients’ request for lower costs and faster turnarounds. How? difuze’s software developers, sound and accessibility media experts turned to the development of a natural, non-robotic, neural voice: difuzevox was born and introduced to the market.
Even though other synthetic voice solutions already exist, difuzevox stands apart for a number of reasons. First, we made sure to select voices in Canada’s two official languages that truly reflect the idiosyncrasies of the market and do not feel foreign. Second, we took great care to leverage these voices in a way to ensure they sounded natural. Finally, we integrated the voices into a very easy-to-use, cloud-based application that also automates the creation process from start-to-finish..
The cloud-based platform is based on artificial intelligence and produces video description files read by a neural voice (in French or English) that can be adapted depending on broadcast territories.
How does difuzevox work? Even if the voice is synthetic, our “human” team is here to support the process! Our accessibility media experts provide a properly adapted script, select the appropriate voice, and voilà! the audio file is ready within a few minutes. difuzevox thus reduces delivery timelines up to 10-fold on average (!!), down to 24-48 hours. Furthermore, the automation and use of a neural voice also translate to significantly reduced costs for our clients. Several major Canadian broadcasters are already using difuzevox and enjoying these great benefits.
Ultimately though, the greatest benefit of it all is that difuzevox contributes to making more and more content available to visually impaired audiences.