Introduction
Rehnuma Awaz gives NVDA natural, neural voices for Urdu. Urdu text is read by an Urdu voice, and English words in the same sentence by an English voice, so mixed Urdu and English is read naturally without you switching synthesizers.
Rehnuma Awaz is developed by Centangle Interactive, funded by Ignite (National Technology Fund) and supported by the Ministry of IT & Telecom, Government of Pakistan.
Highlights:
- Rehnuma's own Urdu pronunciation engine, with a hand-checked dictionary of more than 18,000 Urdu words and proper reading of numbers, dates, times, money, percentages and web addresses.
- Speech starts almost immediately and continues smoothly; long Urdu sentences are read in phrases.
- English can be read by Rehnuma's own English voice or by any other synthesizer you have in NVDA, such as Windows OneCore or IBMTTS, with its own settings.
- Every Urdu letter, diacritic, Quranic mark and Urdu punctuation mark has an Urdu name when you type it or move by character.
- Voices run entirely on your computer.
Getting started
- Install the add-on and restart NVDA.
- Press NVDA+Control+S to open the Select Synthesizer dialog, choose Rehnuma Awaz and press Enter.
- Rehnuma Awaz comes with an Urdu voice (Zainab) and an English voice (Akbar English), so it speaks straight away. More voices can be downloaded with the voice manager.
The voices take a few seconds to load when NVDA starts. Until they are ready, the synthesizer you used before Rehnuma Awaz speaks and says that Rehnuma Awaz is loading.
Voice settings
Open them with NVDA+Control+V. Most of them are also in the synth settings ring (NVDA+Control+Left Arrow and NVDA+Control+Right Arrow to choose a setting, NVDA+Control+Up Arrow and NVDA+Control+Down Arrow to change it).
- Voice
- The Urdu voice. In single-voice mode (see English synthesizer) the list also has Rehnuma's English voices.
- Rate, Rate boost, Pitch
- For the Urdu voice.
- Volume
- For all speech, Urdu and English.
- English synthesizer
- What reads English: Rehnuma Awaz itself, or another synthesizer installed in NVDA. The last choice, Off (single voice), turns language switching off: the voice chosen under Voice reads all text, Urdu and English, in its own language. In this mode the English voice, English rate and English pitch settings are hidden. The English synthesizer is not in the settings ring, because loading another synthesizer takes a moment.
- English voice
- The voices of the chosen English synthesizer. For another synthesizer, the voice you set for it in NVDA is selected at first.
- English rate, English pitch
- For English. With another synthesizer, 50 is exactly that synthesizer's rate and pitch as you set them in NVDA; lower or higher values make it slower or faster, lower or higher from there. Volume works the same way: 100 keeps that synthesizer's own volume. Its other settings (variant, inflection and so on) are used as you set them, and using it inside Rehnuma never changes them.
How text is divided between voices
- Urdu script, including Urdu digits ۰ to ۹, is read by the Urdu voice; Latin letters by the English voice.
- Short English, up to two words, inside an Urdu sentence (such as "OK" or "mobile phone") is read by the Urdu voice, so the sentence is not broken up. This can be turned off in the Rehnuma Awaz settings.
- Punctuation and spaces stay with the text around them.
- Text without letters (for example only digits or symbols) is read by the voice that spoke last, unless NVDA's automatic language switching says otherwise. Digits written with 0 to 9 follow the Read numbers setting.
Rehnuma Awaz settings
In NVDA's settings dialog (NVDA+N, Preferences, Settings), choose the Rehnuma Awaz category.
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Pause between sentences (ms) | Silence after each sentence. | 150 |
| Pause at a comma | Silence at a comma, or the voice's own pause. | 100 ms |
| Add phrase breaks in long Urdu sentences | Reads long Urdu sentences in phrases, with a short pause before words such as اور، لیکن، کیونکہ. | On |
| Pause at a phrase break (ms) | Length of that pause. | 100 |
| Read numbers | In the language of the surrounding text, always in Urdu, or always in English. | Surrounding text |
| Read short English (up to 2 words) inside Urdu with the Urdu voice | See How text is divided between voices. | On |
| Use NVDA's language switching for text without letters | Lets NVDA's language information choose the voice for text such as numbers. | On |
| Voice expressiveness, Rhythm variation | How varied the neural voices sound. 50 is each voice's natural setting. | 50 |
| Natural speed-up | At higher rates, the voice itself speaks faster before the rest of the speed-up is applied, which sounds more natural. | On |
| Open voice manager | Opens the Rehnuma Voice Manager. | |
| Check for add-on updates when NVDA starts | Looks for a new version at most once a day. | On |
| Check for updates now | Looks for a new version straight away. |
Characters, symbols and punctuation
When you type, or move by character, Rehnuma Awaz names each character in Urdu: letters (ب is "bay"), letter forms such as ك and ي, diacritics (zabar, zer, pesh, tashdeed and the others), Quranic marks, Urdu punctuation, the half space and other invisible characters, and religious ligatures such as ﷺ and ﷽. Letters copied from PDF files in their joined shapes are named as the letter they stand for.
The Urdu symbol dictionary
Rehnuma Awaz adds an NVDA symbol dictionary, Rehnuma Awaz Urdu symbols, with Urdu names for punctuation and symbols: for example ، (سکتہ)، ؛ (وقفہ)، ؟ (سوالیہ) and ۔ (ختمہ). With it, these are spoken in Urdu by the Urdu voice, and how much is spoken follows NVDA's punctuation level, which you change with NVDA+P. The Urdu marks stay in the text at every level, so the voice still pauses at them.
For the dictionary to be used:
- Open NVDA's settings (NVDA+N, Preferences, Settings) and choose Speech.
- Check Trust voice's language when processing characters and symbols. This is on unless you have turned it off.
- Under Extra dictionaries for character and symbol processing, check Rehnuma Awaz Urdu symbols.
Without it, NVDA names these marks itself, in its own interface language.
Moving by sentence in Microsoft Word
In Microsoft Word, Alt+Down Arrow and Alt+Up Arrow move to the next and previous sentence. Word itself does not end a sentence at the Urdu full stop, so Rehnuma Awaz adds it: sentences also end at ۔ and ؟. ؛ is a pause inside a sentence, as ; is in English. English sentences work as before.
Rehnuma Voice Manager
Open it from NVDA's Tools menu (Rehnuma Voice Manager), with NVDA+Shift+Alt+R, or from the Rehnuma Awaz settings. The shortcut can be changed in NVDA's Input Gestures dialog, under Rehnuma Awaz.
- Show: all voices, Urdu voices or English voices.
- Voices: each voice's name and status: Installed, Not installed or Update available.
- Download installs the selected voice. Every file is checked after downloading, and a voice is only installed when all of it is complete and correct.
- Update appears when a newer version of an installed voice is available. If the voice is in use, restart NVDA to start using the new version.
- Preview plays a short sample; while it plays the button becomes Pause preview and then Resume preview (Alt+P for all three).
- Details shows the voice's language, quality, version, description and download size.
- Use this voice makes the selected voice your Urdu or English voice, and offers to switch NVDA to Rehnuma Awaz if another synthesizer is active.
- Remove deletes a downloaded voice.
- Refresh loads the list of voices again.
Without an internet connection the voice manager still lists your installed voices. Downloaded voices are kept in your NVDA configuration folder, so they are kept when the add-on is updated.
Updates
When NVDA starts, Rehnuma Awaz looks for a new version at most once a day; you can turn this off, or check at any time, in the Rehnuma Awaz settings. When a new version is available, a dialog shows what has changed. Update now downloads it, checks it, and hands it to NVDA, which asks you to confirm and then to restart. Updates do not include voices: your voices and settings are kept.
Voices and updates are only installed when their information is signed by Rehnuma Awaz, so changed or older files from anyone else are refused.
Using other synthesizers with Rehnuma Awaz
- Any synthesizer installed in NVDA can read English inside Rehnuma Awaz (see English synthesizer in Voice settings). Urdu waits until the English has been spoken, so the voices never overlap.
- Rehnuma Awaz also works inside MultiLang: MultiLang can use Rehnuma Awaz for Urdu and another synthesizer, such as IBMTTS, for English. MultiLang itself cannot be chosen as Rehnuma's English synthesizer.
Keyboard commands
| Command | Keys |
|---|---|
| Open the Rehnuma Voice Manager | NVDA+Shift+Alt+R |
| Next and previous sentence in Microsoft Word | Alt+Down Arrow, Alt+Up Arrow |
| Voice settings | NVDA+Control+V |
| Choose a synthesizer | NVDA+Control+S |
| Synth settings ring | NVDA+Control+Arrow keys |
| Punctuation level | NVDA+P |
This guide, in English and Urdu, is in NVDA's Help menu under Rehnuma Help.
Requirements and privacy
- NVDA 2026.1 or later, 64-bit.
- Voices run entirely on your computer; what you read never leaves it.
- An internet connection is only used to download voices and previews and to check for updates.
About Rehnuma Awaz
Rehnuma Awaz is developed by Centangle Interactive, funded by Ignite (National Technology Fund) and supported by the Ministry of IT & Telecom, Government of Pakistan. Its speech engine, Urdu pronunciation and NVDA driver are Rehnuma's own work, built from the ground up.
It uses open-source components, whose licences come with the add-on (in the NOTICES folder of the synthesizer): ONNX Runtime, Sonic, and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Some voices in the voice manager come from the Piper community.
- Website: rehnumaawaz.com
- Email: support@rehnumaawaz.com.