Can an app modify an Android speech to text pronounciation

Question

I work for a company called edX (pronounced Ed-X).

We are currently in a push to make our Android App more accessible to the blind. To do so, we are taking advantage of TalkBack mode.

Whenever TalkBack mode tries to read edX, it pronounces it "Ed". I want to fix it, but there is only so much I can do.

For example, anywhere that there is a static reference to edX (for example, text views), I can set the pronunciation manually. However, our app also makes extensive use of web views, where the content is pulled dynamically from a server.

How do I set the pronunciation there? Can I somehow modify the text to speech engine on app install/startup?

Answer 1

Using SSML you should be able to load custom lexicons (pronunciation dictionaries) or override the pronunciation with

<phoneme ph="ɛd ɛks" alphabet="ipa">edX</phoneme>

But I'm not sure if the current Android TTS API supports that functionality. (also I'm not sure is that is the right IPA)