Dunya — Turkmenistan's First Text-to-Speech Voice for Blind and Low-Vision Readers

On 20 November 2023, World Children's Day, Turkmenistan's Ministry of Education, the ATscale Global Partnership for Assistive Technology, the Blind and Deaf Society of Turkmenistan, developer LouderPages (maker of the RHVoice engine) and UNICEF Turkmenistan jointly launched a Turkmen-language text-to-speech voice named 'Dunya.'
The tool addresses a gap left by commercial vendors, who had not built Turkmen-language voices, leaving blind and low-vision Turkmen speakers unable to have digital text read aloud to them in their own language. Dunya is free to download, runs on Windows and Android, and is packaged as an add-on for the JAWS and NVDA screen readers.
According to UNICEF Turkmenistan, the voice's design was shaped through close consultation with the Blind and Deaf Society of Turkmenistan so that it reflects the needs and perspectives of visually impaired users.
Dunya is one of four under-represented-language voices produced through the same ATscale-funded programme, alongside Nepali, Setswana and a southern-dialect Vietnamese voice. Independent Turkmen media (Turkmenportal) corroborated the launch and its technical features, but no data on downloads, active users or measured reading-access outcomes has been published since, so demonstrated reach and formal evaluation evidence remain limited.

Read the full analysis: https://turkmenportal.com/en/news/70215-a-speech-synthesizer-in-the-turkmen-language-was-launched-for-people-with-visual-impairments