i want recommendations for free text to speech interfaces like those used for speech impaired people (screens of icons for quick vocabulary, customizable, with option for full text input)
bonus points for something with a highly customizable voice, or also seeking recommendations for any tts voice that's local, customizable, not genAI, runs on old hardware. i don't want solutions that only work with the system's black box TTS i have to find arcane packs for
please boost! 
@mavica_again so, I've got a potential solution, but I'm getting caught up on some developments and wanting to explain some details.
Short version: Piper TTS https://github.com/OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl
@mavica_again It was originally called Mimic3, made by a company called Mycroft.ai even though they weren't an AI company in the way that genAI is right now. They focused on language processing, in order to make a local voice assistant. Required figuring out what people were saying, what they were meaning, and a way to reply.
That lead to Mimic3, their library that used university voice samples to make models based on speakers, and while they sound high quality, they still sound artificial.
@mavica_again The company ended up getting sued into bankruptcy by a patent troll, but they were able to have their work picked up by what looks like maybe the folks who do Home Assistant? And, they relaunched the Mimic3 project as Piper TTS, and have been working on it from there.
Hopefully, it'd be what you're looking for, and might run well enough on lower end hardware to fit your needs.
@gothpanda that's interesting and i'll take a look at it but i'm looking more for voice synthesizers than anything that uses recorded speech as a source
that could've been clearer in my first post
thank you
