As a visually impaired person, I tend to listen to most of the content I find on the web, whether it’s blog posts or social media entries. As a rule of thumb, I rely on the built-in text-to-speech feature on my iPhone, iPad, and Macs. It’s great in the sense that it lets me “read” almost anything I come across, and it’s reliable. I love it for the freedom it gives me.
That said, it could be better. The voice is pretty robotic, and it takes some getting used to, especially at the higher speeds I tend to listen at. Luckily, I’ve been using it for so long that it doesn’t bother me. Still, I know there are better options out there today. ElevenLabs, for instance, has some fantastic voices. They sound natural and, to my ear, are much more pleasant to listen to.
So I thought… “Why not combine my posts with ElevenLabs and create audio versions?” After playing around for a bit, I did just that. Here’s my current workflow:
- Write the first draft as I normally would.
- Edit it until it’s just the way I want it.
- Run it through ElevenLabs to generate an MP3 file.
- Download the file to my computer.
- Upload it to my blog host, copy the HTML, and paste it into the post.
It’s a very manual process, and I’m sure someone out there will tell me there’s a faster, smarter way to do this. I’m all ears to constructive criticism if it improves my workflow.
Now anyone who wants to listen to my most recent blog posts can just hit “play” and enjoy, whether they’re visually impaired or simply don’t feel like reading.
My intention was to do this for all of my posts, but I quickly found out that this costs real money. I blew past the token limit on the ElevenLabs free trial and had to upgrade to a paid plan. Right now it’s only a few bucks a month, but even that won’t cover converting every single post. That’s why I’m only able to offer this for the latest ones. I’ll slowly work on converting older posts, but it may take a while.
Again, if anyone knows of a service that offers ElevenLabs-level quality at a more cost-effective price, please leave a comment below. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the new audio versions.
🎧 Listen to this post. Audio was generated using ElevenLabs.
#Accessibility #ElevenLabs #Blogging