Add text-to-speech feature to webbook

[josieg]

Feature Description

Provide people reading a book via the Pressbooks webbook the option to have the content on a page/chapter read aloud to them without having to install software or a plugin.

Feature Use Case

This would would help increase the accessibility of resources published in Pressbooks. It would benefit all students, but it would specifically benefit students who have various vision impairments, students with learning and attention disabilities, and students who prefer listening to content for any reason.

This idea is related to #57 (which suggests being able to export audio files).

Other Notes

I found this WordPress plugin that might be a possibility??: ResponsiveVoice Text to Speech

[SteelWagstaff]

@josieg suggested via Twitter that we may also wish to consider https://trinityaudio.ai/the-trinity-audio-wordpress-plugin-implementation-guide/. See implementation by Clint Lalonde for WP blog at https://edtechfactotum.com/could-a-canadian-mooc-provider-have-helped-higher-ed-this-fall/

@ricardopressbooks Has suggested we could perhaps try to integrate the AWS Polly service in order to allow users to listen to audio from books (chapters or any text, to define) through some custom plugin or use the official AWS Polly WP plugin. Tutorial: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-add-text-to-speech-in-wordpress/

[josieg]

Would you believe I forgot I submitted this? Thanks Steel!

[SteelWagstaff]

@josieg it was a good idea then (and now). Thanks for keeping up your vigilance for things that would make Pressbooks more accessible to more users!

[pb-amy]

University of Houston sent forth the same suggestion -- https://pressbooks.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/7075. Would be a great feature to explore!

[tw77]

University of Minnesota also requests this: https://pressbooks.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/9648