Aschehoug

Aschehoug, one of Norway’s oldest publishers (celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2022!) is a publisher of literature, educational materials and legal materials. When Aschehoug contacted CereProc about implementing CereProc’s new Norwegian bokmål and nynorsk voices into Aschehoug’s advanced, website-based learning platform, CereProc was more than happy to assist.

As a result, Aschehoug has now added functionality on their website that enables users to listen to the text in articles and learning materials, via audio speech generated via CereProc’s award winning text to speech system, CereWave AI, in a language and voice of their own choice.

Student using Aschehoug Universe

In addition to Norwegian voices, Aschehoug’s website now has access to multiple CereWave AI voices in various languages, including French, Spanish, Danish, Swedish and English.

Marte Patel, Head of Digital Development at Aschehoug Education, was pleasantly surprised by the popularity of the service following a low-key soft launch.

“We launched the functionality without notifying our users, no news or anything and we were surprised by how popular it became straight away! The feedback we’ve received is that the functionality is helpful both for users with reading difficulties, but also pupils who have “reading fatigue”.”

Aschehoug’s website employs CereProc’s CereCloud SaaS to access CereWave AI’s voices to generate the required speech, using CereVoice’s easy to integrate API to allow the Aschehoug website to contact the CereVoice Cloud and transmit the text. This text is then turned into speech, which is then delivered to the user quickly, thereby creating an easy, fast and pleasant-to-use interface. CereProc’s team worked with Aschehoug to ensure that the system functioned without any frustrating delays, and there were no technical issues impacting the end user.

“We’ve really enjoyed working with CereProc. As a smaller company, with around 250 employees, we sometimes find it hard working with huge companies who may see us as not being a high priority due to our small size. With CereProc, however, we have always had a personable relationship, with CereProc responding to our questions quickly, and always very quick to assist whenever they could.”