What software package could link speech to written words on a web page?

I'm a teacher and I would like to be able to let my students click on a web page and hear the words written there spoken aloud. I know I could code it manually but is there some way to automate this task of connecting mp3 sound files to links composed of paragraphs or sentences? Also free or low cost software is good!What software package could link speech to written words on a web page?Is this something you want for general web pages (ones that you don't create)? You can get a text-to-speech program that will convert written text to audio. Do a google search for Natural Reader. They have a freebie text to speech program.



There are still some flaws with the various text to speech programs but some are pretty good. The main flaw that I've seen is that they have difficulty distinguishing between word that have different pronunciation (e.g. "Please polish the Polish silverware" or "Even though it was a minute amount of rain, we headed the warning and headed indoors within a minute"). So, presenting it to children as a teaching tool might require some extra checking to make sure the pronunciation it comes up with is for the correct version of the word.



If they're for webpages that you create, then you have a little more control over it and can fine tune it to make sure the correct pronunciation is used. But that also would require more work to get set up.



I've used a package called SoundManager2 (http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soun鈥?/a> ) that can playback an mp3 file from javascript (in the background without needing to put up all the playback controls). With a little javascript programming, you'd have something like this in your html file...

She went outside to catch some %26lt;span onclick='javascript:sayWord( "butterflies.mp3" )'%26gt;butterflies%26lt;/span%26gt;

You'd have to write the sayWord routine (to interface with the SoundManager) and create an mp3 file that just says the word "butterflies".