[ILUG] using linux to give someone a voice!

[Paul Murray]

Hi Guys,

By chance saw an elderly gentleman last night in a nursing home who
through old age has lost his voice and is now in a wheelchair and
obviously very frustrated at only being able to communicate with
thumbs up and down type gestures. Stephen Hawking came to mind and
since the guys has full use of his hands, I started thinking about
netbooks etc, and text to voice. I've played with this kind of thing
from a fun perspective on a mac, but wondering if there is a way to do
it from linux with a text entry and carraige return to send out the
audio rather than mouse clicking through menus to initiate speaks or
wrapping text in cli.

While trival enough to knock up, I thought I'd throw it out to the
group to see if anyone else has played with this and have any
expereicences to share before I try re-inventing the wheel.

My current thinking is that a console based app would be the best
idea, have the machine autoboot into console and with no graphics
being displayed it would lengthen battery life.

Any thoughts??

Paul.