Hmm… As a sighted person, I’m not very experienced with screen readers, but I still would like IF to talk to me sometimes.
As I understand there’s only Orca for Linux, and I totally couldn’t use it (maybe because I’m on Mate and not Gnome…) as neither of “orca modifier” keys worked.
Not only that, from the docs it’s clear that software like QTads (where you cannot move caret over the text you need to be read) wouldn’t work, while a browser would require a lot of keystrokes. Maybe the latter isn’t the case with NVDA or JAWS.
However, Live Regions could be potentially useful for Lectrote/Parchment + Orca:
help.gnome.org/users/orca/stabl … ns.html.en
I can imagine at least one scenario when calling TTS would be meaningful from inside the game: two characters, male and female, or British and American, talking to you.
In Lectrote, a better-than-espeak TTS is possible either by enabling Speech API and putting keys into environment variables (at least theoretically, I did that with my Chromium) or by using a library like responsivevoice.org/api/
Same goes for Parchment, with only difference that it can be run in another browser where TTS support is easier/better/harder/worse.
Finally, a quick check with PyWebkitGtk, another possible meta-interpreter platform shows that it can support TTS via responsiveVoice library, but in fallback mode. Not sure what that is, maybe requires more network traffic. On another hand, Python program can probably access MS or Apple TTS platform via some modules even if Webkit cannot. (I’m making two conjectures in last sentence both of which might prove wrong.)
P.S. One more use case: one may want to develop a story with above-average TTS using SSML:
w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/
Glk probably has this: one channel for pure text, another for markup?