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This is a prototype vision of how a future government service could work. It's not a real service yet, but we're exploring what it could look like. Your feedback will help shape the real service.

Text-to-Speech Walkthrough

Step-by-step guide to converting council announcements to audio with Amazon Polly

Try Text-to-Speech for Council Announcements

8 minutes to convert council announcements to natural-sounding audio

No deployment needed. Use Amazon Polly to generate broadcast-quality audio from text and hear three different UK English voices.
No technical knowledge required

This walkthrough guides you through converting text to speech using Amazon Polly. Perfect for communications officers, accessibility teams, and anyone evaluating text-to-speech for making council information accessible to all residents.

What you'll do

In this 8-minute walkthrough, you'll:

  1. Access the Polly interface - Open the text-to-speech console (2 minutes)
  2. Select a council announcement - Choose from 4 sample announcements (1 minute)
  3. Generate audio with different voices - Convert text to speech with Amy, Brian, and Emma (3 minutes)
  4. Compare voices and calculate ROI - Listen to voice quality and see cost savings (2 minutes)

Before you start

Important You must have already deployed the Text-to-Speech scenario to your Innovation Sandbox account.

Deploy the Text-to-Speech scenario if you haven't already. Deployment takes 3-5 minutes.

Sample announcement check

Ready Sample data is pre-loaded and ready to use.

What you'll learn

For communications teams

  • How text-to-speech works with council content
  • Natural-sounding UK English neural voices
  • Instant audio generation (30 seconds vs 1-2 weeks)
  • 99% cost reduction vs studio recording
  • When to use different voice styles (conversational, authoritative, formal)

For accessibility teams

  • WCAG 2.1 AA compliance for accessible content
  • PSBAR 2018 regulatory requirements
  • Serving visually impaired and reading-difficulty residents
  • Multi-channel delivery (web, phone, social media)
  • Avoiding non-compliance penalties (up to £20K per breach)

Sample council announcements

We've prepared 4 realistic council announcements for you to convert:

UK English neural voices

Amazon Polly offers three neural voices for British English, each with a distinct style:

Who benefits from audio announcements?

Text-to-speech makes council information accessible to residents who cannot or prefer not to read text:

  • Visually impaired residents - 2% of UK population (1.3M people) rely on audio content
  • Reading difficulties - 16% of UK adults have literacy below Level 1
  • Elderly residents - 19% of UK population aged 65+ may have vision decline
  • Busy commuters - Listen to council news while driving or traveling
  • Non-native speakers - Audio helps with pronunciation and comprehension
  • Phone callers - Integrate audio with IVR phone systems

Regulatory requirement: PSBAR 2018 (Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations) requires councils to provide accessible alternatives to text-only content. Text-to-speech audio versions ensure WCAG 2.1 AA compliance and avoid penalties up to £20,000 per accessibility breach.

The wow moment

When you hear the neural voices, you'll notice:

  • Natural speech patterns - Not robotic "computer voices" from the past
  • UK-specific pronunciation - Correctly pronounces British place names, postcodes, council terms
  • Emotional inflection - Appropriate tone for urgent warnings vs routine updates
  • Instant generation - 30 seconds from text to broadcast-quality audio

These are the same neural voices used by the BBC, NHS, and major UK councils for accessible content. Residents won't know it's AI-generated - the quality is indistinguishable from professional voice recording.

Think about your council announcements

How many announcements does your council publish per year?

Consider the impact for 50 announcements annually:

Current cost (studio recording)
50 × £200 = £10,000/year
With Polly text-to-speech
50 × £0.008 = £0.40/year
Annual cost savings
£9,999.60 (99.996% reduction)
Time savings
99 hours/year freed from coordinating studio recordings
Compliance value
Avoid up to £20,000 penalty per accessibility breach
Total annual benefit
£30,000 (savings + compliance protection)

Committee language: "Amazon Polly text-to-speech reduces audio production costs by 99.99% - from £10,000 to £0.40 annually for 50 announcements. More importantly, it enables 100% accessibility compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA, PSBAR 2018) by providing instant audio versions of all council communications, avoiding potential penalties up to £20K per breach. Total annual value: £30K in cost savings and compliance protection."

Start walkthrough

Takes approximately 8 minutes

Need help?

If you're stuck, check the troubleshooting section or contact us.