Rockbox is a voluntary and extremely worthwhile project which provides a spoken alternative interface for navigating portable media devices. Once Rockbox is installed onto a player, it can speak all menu items of its interface, it can spell folder and individual track names, and it can be customised to speak folder or track titles either through synthetic speech or even using pre-recorded human speech.
It should be borne in mind that Rockbox is a completely self-contained interface for working with portable media devices. It does not use the firmware as provided as part of the individual player on which it resides. So in the context of a mainstream portable media player, you can use Windows Explorer to transfer music onto the device. The disadvantage is that Rockbox will only play certain file types. These however are the most popular including MP3, which seems to have been universally adopted as a popular file format in which to encode material, especially music. However, books from Audible are unable to be played, together with protected music content. A person can easily switch back to the conventional player's firmware at any time in the unlikely event this is required, although oral feedback will of course not be heard when navigating the player when this is done.
The players currently supported are as follows:
Links for this Section
Visit the Rockbox Voice Files page
Learn how to allow Rockbox automatically to speak folder and file names
Accessible World Rockbox presentation
Back to the Portable Player Portal