<voice>

Description

Specifies voice characteristics for the spoken text.

Syntax


<voice
    gender="male" | "female" | "neutral"
    age="integer"
    variant="integer"
    name="name"
    category="child" | "teenager" | "adult" | "elder"> 
  child elements
</voice>

Attributes

Attribute

Description

gender

Preferred gender of the voice to speak the text.

age

Preferred age of the voice to speak the text.

variant

A variant of the other voice characteristics to speak the text.

name

Name of the specific voice name to speak the text.

category

The latest version of the SSML specification no longer defines this attribute. See your vendor documentation to confirm which attributes are supported/recommended.

Preferred age category of the voice to speak the text.

Parents

<audio>, <choice>, <emphasis>, <enumerate>, <foreach>, <paragraph>, <p>, <prompt>, <prosody>, <sentence>, <s>, <speak>, <voice>

Children

<audio>, <break>, <emphasis>, <mark>, <paragraph>, <p>, <phoneme>, <prosody>, <say-as>, <sentence>, <s>, <sub>, <voice>, <value>, #PCDATA

Limitations/Restrictions

Note: If you are using a TTS engine that does not support <voice>, click here for a workaround.

Example

To include speech markup tags, insert the SSML tags inside one of the <prompt>, <audio>, <choice>, <enumerate>, or <foreach> (within <prompt>) elements.


<prompt>
   <voice gender="female">I am a woman</voice>
   <!-- platform specific voice name -->
   <voice name="Jill">My name is Jill</voice>
</prompt>


Workaround for <voice>

If you are using a TTS engine that does not support <voice>, you can use the following workaround:

Instead of using the <voice> tag, use the TTSENGINE property or attribute of <prompt> to specify which TTS engine (i.e., voice) you want to use and to switch between TTS engines (voices). For example:

<prompt>
   <value expr="greeting"/>
   This will use the default voice.
</prompt>
<prompt ttsengine="SPEECHIFY_TOM">
   This will use a male voice, if a male voice is configured as Speechify Tom.
</prompt>
<prompt ttsengine="SPEECHIFY_MARA">
   This will use a female voice, if a female voice is configured as Speechify Mara.
</prompt>

You can switch between any of the voices you have installed, using the TTSENGINE names you have configured for each voice.