I have found a neat program (one of many on the market) that will turn text into speech. I am taking my laptop into the hospital with me so I can "talk" to the staff while my trach is in. The particular program I am using is shareware (free) and is called CoolSpeech. Microsoft also has one that comes on a lot of the computers they are selling now, but it doesn't have a female voice standard with the program. If you go onto your favorite search engine and type in coolspeech you will come up with the website. Or type in text to speech, and it will give you a bunch to choose from.
Basically, anything I type, the program will turn into a voice. Comes in many languages. It will help for when the family calls, or if I have to put in an emergency call when I get back home.
Thought I would pass this on in case anybody else needs something similar.

Andrea