NextUp's TextAloud is a Hit with Acclaimed Musician Joey Stuckey.

CLEMMONS, N.C. & MACON, Ga. -- NextUp's (www.NextUp.com) TextAloud software continues to find popularity among the visually impaired for its ease of use and superb voice quality. Most recently, famed blind musician, producer, and radio personality Joey Stuckey has discovered TextAloud, and is now an official and enthusiastic endorser.

"We're delighted to have the endorsement of Joey Stuckey, one of the Southeast's most famous and remarkable people," comments Rick Ellis, President of NextUp.com. "His use of TextAloud is an example of just how useful our software can be for those with a visual disability."

TextAloud seamlessly converts text into spoken audio for listening on a laptop or desktop PC, and can also save text to audio files for playback on portables like iPods (R) and other devices. Simple and affordable, and with an array of natural-sounding voices, TextAloud is popular with the visually impaired, who too often face robotic voices when desiring to listen to books or articles read aloud.

Stuckey is an award-winning blind guitarist, songwriter, singer, composer, producer, radio personality, teacher, and sound engineer, who in April 2006 was appointed the official Ambassador of Music for Macon, Georgia by its Mayor and City Council. He lost his sight and sense of smell as an infant as the result of a brain tumor, yet is now a successful musician, producer and entrepreneur who was delighted to discover TextAloud.

"I was very impressed with TextAloud - especially with the quality of its voices," Stuckey comments. "I have a screen reader for the blind for more advanced applications, but honestly the sound quality is the pits. I read several eBooks per week, and if I want to read for pleasure, then I only use TextAloud!"

While it cannot replace high-end screen readers, TextAloud is a superb addition to the blind person's arsenal of tools (and is quite accessible for the blind if used with a minimum of JFW 5.1 or higher). Stuckey adds, "Every blind person should have TextAloud on their computer - the pronunciation, voice and audio quality make it the only choice for reading Word, PDF, web, and other text." Stuckey also values TextAloud's ability to export text in specific voices to audio files - a great potential tool for people with blind friends or family, enabling them to send actual audio files to loved ones. "The voice quality is heaven," he comments. "It allows me to listen to something I've written, like an article, blog post, radio spot, or lyric, with a more human voice."

NextUp.com offers TextAloud with optional premium voices, including numerous accents and languages from AT&T Natural Voices (TM), NeoSpeech (R), Nuance (R), Acapela (R) and Cepstral (R) for the most natural-sounding computer speech anywhere.