In the proposed action, a set of complementary speech services will be developed based on the ILSP’s state-of-the-art Text-to-Speech technology for the Greek language. These services will be freely available to all citizens through a dedicated web portal. More specifically, the implementation includes:

• A service for automatic document-to-speech conversion via e-mail: Using this service any citizen can send a document via an e-mail message and receive it back in audio format.
• Library of audio books: The library will include a set of audio books that will have been produced automatically (or semi-automatically) from their corresponding electronic format. The service will include book titles free of or with granted rights for such a use, covering many areas such as reference books, educational or literature books, user guides etc. Additionally, the library will include audio material of selected public sector’s content (such as legislation documents, citizen’s guides, journalism’s guides etc.). The library will also comprise audio books following the DAISY standard.
• News and information content: The service will derive news and other information content from major media and news portals and will deliver it, via the dedicated portal, into audio format through proper innovative ergonomics which will help users to be kept frequently and timely informed. The news content will be derived from either private popular news portals or/and public sector’s press and communication offices, ensuring proper rights permissions.

All the above services will be freely available to citizens hence offering the means for access to audio books, dynamic content (e.g., news) as well as personal content corresponding to their needs. The proposed action will maximize the availability as well as the social impact of speech synthesis technology, constituting its merits widely available to citizens and disseminating research and development achievements via freely offered useful daily services.