I've searched far and wide for a similar app. Short of an expensive program intended for sight-impaired people, I haven't found anything like it on the Mac. (The program from the 2004 comment is long gone). I probably won't purchase this unless it turns up in a Bundle or Promo someplace. It's over-priced for those like me who would use it only infrequently. I don't know how it works in Snow Leopard, but it's fine in 10.5.8

Why would you want to use it? It's perfect for entering bank account or other long numbers when cut and paste is not available. It's also OK for light data entry--it is a substitute for 100% read back or double-entry verification. And, for sight-impaired people, it can aid touch typing, without having to look at the screen as much. However, it can be tiring to use for along time. One looks at the source material and listens to it at the same time--result: sensory overload.

If you type too fast, you hear gibberish, so slow down or set the Speaking Rate to "Fast" in the "Text to Speech" pane of the Speech Preferences Pane. Some voices work better than others, so experiment.

What's annoying is having to turn the app on and off when you want to pause it temporarily. But it was easy to write a script to this and assign it a hot key (with FastScripts or iKey). Here's a script below to do it. Be sure to zap gremlins in a text editor before using.


(*
Toggle Keystrokes Pronouncer
*)
tell application "System Events"
if exists application process "Keystrokes Pronouncer" then
tell application "Keystrokes Pronouncer" to quit
else
tell application "Keystrokes Pronouncer" to activate
end if
end tell

A nice guy wrote a similar program which will do the same for free with ONE line of RealBasic. Download it at http://www.project-ecap.de/ochi/KeyThing.sit