Popular lottery website adds exclusive new feature
By Todd Northrop
Speednet Group, a leading lottery technology company, today announced a new voice synthesis feature for the Lottery Post website that can speak the winning numbers at the tap of a button.
The new feature — the first of its kind among all major lottery websites — is not just a handy aid for having the numbers read aloud, but critical for people with eyesight deficiencies, as well as conditions such as dyslexia. It is immediately available for both mobile and desktop users.
On a computer or tablet, visitors to Lottery Post's results pages simply tap the link marked "Speak" adjacent to the winning numbers to have the numbers spoken aloud. The Speak link is available on most pages that show lottery results at Lottery Post.
For phone visitors, Lottery Post displays an icon resembling a loudspeaker next to the winning numbers. When the icon is tapped, the results are spoken aloud.
Speaking can be stopped at any time by tapping the link or icon again.
The new feature goes beyond the assistive technologies built-in to modern web browsers.
"Speech on web pages is a critical feature for many people," said Todd Northrop, founder of Lottery Post. "Although web browsers do have built-in screen reader capabilities, they are notoriously inaccurate and difficult to use, and they rely on websites appropriately coding their content — which they often do not — leading to a very poor experience."
Another problem with screen readers is that content viewed on a screen often does not translate well if it is spoken exactly as it appears.
"Lottery Post's new Speak feature goes beyond screen readers by analyzing all the results in real-time and re-wording them to be pronounced correctly in a speaking context," Northrop explained. "The feature even slows down its rate of speech at appropriate points for clarity, if supported by the visitor's web browser."
Lottery Post is the world's most popular lottery-related website, and home to the web's most accurate and complete lottery results database. Because more people check their lottery results every day at Lottery Post than any other website, we make it our mission to provide the best experience with the most timely and accurate data — and serving every person equally, regardless of special needs.
Lottery Post celebrates its 20th anniversary this May.
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Great feature Todd. Especially those who have disabilities Thanks!
This is awesome, thanks Todd.
Great job Todd. Innovation is the way to stay ahead.
Thank You Todd!! Lottery Post gets better every day!!
What A Great Feature you are Adding,
You are Amazing
This is a great new feature. Thanks Todd.
Lottery Post gets better & better...thank you Todd!
Thanks for the nice comments everyone!
I really feel that the Internet is critical to everyone's life, including those with vision problems and/or disabilities.
This has been a focus of mine stretching back to Lottery Post's beginnings, when I chose colors that would be easy for color-blind people to see. I actually received a flood of e-mails from people just to say thanks because they could finally read lottery results clearly on the web.
There are a bunch of things coded within each web page at Lottery Post that help people as well — things that nobody would ever know about unless they try using a screen reader or other assistive technology. For example, images have little text descriptions built into them, so that people who can't see the images can have their browser "describe" what the image is.
So this new speaking feature is one more technology added mainly to help those who need some assistance. However, the nice thing is that it can help everyone, not just people who need help.
For example, if you want to double-check the numbers against your lottery ticket, just click the Speak link and then you can just look at your ticket, comparing numbers against the numbers spoken. A nice way to avoid problems checking tickets and make it a bit easier!
Won't be using this feature (not yet anyway!), but really appreciate the compassion and forward thinking LP has by adding this to your great website.
Absolutely epic feature for everyone especially the disabled. Thank you for all your continued hard work.
Alexa is going to be jealous !!
Many years ago, (more than I care to remember) I worked with a guy who had placed a "speech card" inside his desktop PC. Because I'd never seen a PC with speech hardware and software in it, I asked to hear it say something. He then demonstrated what his PC could do by playing aloud a simple command......
What I heard that desktop say was laughable! And that's exactly what I did, I laughed! To my surprise my colleague agreed with me. He said "I named that voice 'Sven'!" Sven's voice (if you could call it a voice) was halting and broken and sounded as if someone with a Scandinavian accent was speaking.
We've come a long way since those days! G5
Bringing back memories — a speech card! I remember those, way back in the very early PC days. Speech required a stand-alone hardware card because there was no built-in sound abilities in PCs, apart from the "system beep". We have come a long way indeed!