The surprisingly bad state of Web Speech API

When working on my digital sign, I discovered how macOS fundamentally fails at providing usable speech synthesis. Despite Apple’s marketing claims about accessibility, their entire operating system’s approach to text to speech is broken and restrictive. 🎙️

System-wide Issues 🚫

macOS has severe limitations across the board:

Speech requires explicit user permissions
Unreliable voice synthesis
Limited voice selection
Poor integration with web standards

Audio Comparison 🔊

Here’s what the same text sounds like on different platforms:

macOS speech synthesis - robotic and broken

Chrome on Windows/Linux - clear and natural

Developer Impact ⚙️

These system limitations force developers to:

Build complex workarounds
Use third-party speech services
Deal with inconsistent APIs
Handle frequent user permission prompts

User Experience Problems 👥

The issues affect real users:

Screen readers work inconsistently
Voice quality varies drastically
System permissions interrupt workflow
Limited understanding of content

For an ecosystem that heavily markets its accessibility features, macOS’s approach to speech synthesis is shockingly inadequate. ⚠️