Acapela speech enables Solenne, APEC's virtual advisor.

The APEC (Association for executive employment in France) has developed training software to accompany the 400 000 executives who use their services, and help them with their job hunting. The aim is to help users to search for jobs by identifying, fine tuning or creating their profile to better match employer requirements.

The process is very complete, to help users fully understand all the different requirements, and give them as much information and as many tools as possible.

The program was created with F3M, a specialist in multimedia ressource design and e-learning solution deployment, and its partners Cantoche, Lingway and Acapela Group.

Using their know-how in content modelling, F3M created a "Market Simulator", including a talking virtual agent from Cantoche, speech enabled by Acapela. The result is a graphic, user friendly interface.

The 3D virtual Actor "Solenne", designed by Cantoche, livens up the APEC training software thanks to Acapela's natural sounding speech synthesis, by reading out advice to help the users make the most of this tool.

"The users are guided through their search by voice, creating a lively human-like interactive relationship. Acapela's text to speech makes the program easier to work with, and allows greater freedom when adding content." Says Michel Rannou, Partner Relationship Manager of APEC.

The speech synthesis, which transforms any text into speech in real time with an extremely natural-sounding voice, offers quality good enough to take over from a recorded human voice.

The vocalised text is generated by VirtualSpeaker, Acapeal's virtual recording studio solution. The generated prompts are then included in the application to be installed on client machines. In this way, VirtualSpeaker can enrich e-learning programs with speech, the most natural of interfaces, with no extra recording or updating costs.

Solenne, a LivingActor from Cantoche, is an animated interactive character who can be added as an "overlay" to any application. It is fully customised and can follow the user to suit their needs : introducing the interface, on-line training, help functions...

The APEC's market simulator will be distributed in may, on CD.

More information at www.f3m.fr or www.cantoche.com