Meet the man behind Kannada's inclusion in Google text-to-speech

It was all thanks to the efforts of Siddalingeshwar Ingali, a visually-impaired government employee from Karnataka, that Google was pushed to include Kannada in its text-to-speech tool. Ingali had garnered massive support for his online petition asking for the same, and Google appreciated his efforts.

Belagavi (Karnataka): Google Text-to-Speech, a screen reader application, has become one of the most important tools for the visually-impaired to operate their android phones. However, it was only due to the efforts of a government employee from Karnataka that Google decided to incorporate the Kannada language into its application.

Siddalingeshwar Ingali, who is employed as a Second Divisional Assistant in the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department at the Bailhongal taluk office in Belagavi district, has been visually impaired since birth.

Ingali wanted other like him to make full use of technology to take control of their own lives without the help of others. One such tool which has proved to be of immense help is the Google Text to Speech (TTS) software.

However, till 2017, TTS only had English, Hindi, and Bengali incorporated among the Indian languages. Though Siddalingeshwar himself was proficient in English, he wanted others to make use of the software in Kannada.

Hence, in 2017, Ingali launched an online petition through Change.org to have Kannada included in the TTS platform. As many as 3,317 people from across India supported Ingali by signing the online petition.

Taking note of the massive response Ingali's application got, Google appreciated his efforts and agreed to include Kannada in the TTS platform as well. Along with Kannada a few other Indian languages were included in 2019, and were available for use earlier this year.

Google Text to Speech helps the visually impaired to operate their android phones. The tool works as a guide, which reads aloud text on the screen for the user.

Read:Microsoft text-to-speech tool now supports Hindi, Indian English