I believe vision-impaired users would greatly prefer their own TTS, in part because many can listen at 5-10x speed since they're so used to hearing that particular voice.
It sounds as though the author has not actually asked vision-impaired users.
And of course audio is not only for vision-impaired users.
I can play audio directly from a webpage at 5-10x speed easily, but I use the command line programs like ffmpeg/mplayer/mpv/vlc, not a browser like Chrome.
Assuming a Google employee's belief reflects what all web users actually prefer (doubtful!), websites could offer a variety of audio with the same TTS voices that screen readers use.
It sounds as though the author has not actually asked vision-impaired users.
And of course audio is not only for vision-impaired users.
I can play audio directly from a webpage at 5-10x speed easily, but I use the command line programs like ffmpeg/mplayer/mpv/vlc, not a browser like Chrome.
Assuming a Google employee's belief reflects what all web users actually prefer (doubtful!), websites could offer a variety of audio with the same TTS voices that screen readers use.