voice/speech Technology

i hope you can help me. im trying to find a good freeware speech software. its for a friend's friend. he has poor vision, and we visited him a couple of days ago, i didnt want to stick my nose in his business, but on the way out i said if he wanted id have a look, he was very pleased of the offer. the only thing is he wasnt sure which os he has. he said he knew of xp's narrator, but i didnt ask if that is what he was using. so im going to try and find afew different programs. so far i have these pages
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/system/fwvoicetech.html
http://www.macupdate.com/search.php?keywords=text to speech
http://freewarearena.org/PHPNuke/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=94
do you have any ideas that will help?thank you

 

microsoft has its owen verstion for people with poor vistion i think its in the options