📻 akashvani: Multilingual News-to-Speech App for Indian Seniors

🎯 The Problem

India has over 450 million people above the age of 50. Many of them struggle with:

• Small screens and dense text
• Reading fatigue and eyesight issues
• Complex digital interfaces
• Language barriers (preferring regional languages)

What if news could be delivered in their native language, read aloud clearly, and accessed with just a single search box?

This is where Akashvani (अकाशवाणी — “Voice from the Sky”) comes in.

Available in Google PlayStore.

Download from Google PlayStore

✨ What is Akashvani?

Akashvani is an open-source web application

• Fetches the latest news from major Indian and international sources
• Creates AI-powered, easy-to-understand summaries
• Translates news into 12 major Indian languages
• Converts text to speech in native language
• Provides a distraction-free, senior-friendly interface

akashvani — An OpenSource web application for news in Indian languages

🌍 Supported Languages

LanguageCodeSpeakersTTS SupportRegionEnglishen100M+

✅ YesPan-IndiaHindihi345M

✅ YesNorth IndiaTamilta75M

✅ YesSouth IndiaTelugute74M

✅ YesSouth IndiaKannadakn44M

✅ YesSouth IndiaMalayalamml34M

✅ YesSouth IndiaBengalibn230M

✅ YesEast IndiaMarathimr83M

✅ YesWest IndiaGujaratigu54M

✅ YesWest IndiaPunjabipa125M

✅ YesNorth IndiaUrduur70M

✅ YesNorth IndiaOdiaor42M📝 Text OnlyEast India

💡 Key Technical Decisions

1. Why Streamlit?

• Rapid development without frontend complexity
• Senior-friendly UI with large default fonts
• Live updates without page refreshes
• Easy deployment on cloud platforms

2. Why NewsAPI (Free Tier)?

• Free tier offers 100 requests/day (sufficient for testing)
• No domain filtering needed (broader coverage)
• Simple REST API, easy to integrate
• Limitation: Must add “India” to queries for Indian-focused results

3. Why OpenAI GPT-3.5-turbo?

• Superior summarization for non-technical audiences
• Multilingual support without language-specific fine-tuning
• Affordable at ~$0.01 per 5 articles
• Reliable and well-documented API

4. Why gTTS?

• Free (no API key required)
• Supports 11 Indian languages natively
• Simple integration with Python
• Fast conversion suitable for real-time use

🔐 Security & Privacy

✅ No user data stored — processing is stateless and transient ✅ API keys in secrets.toml — never committed to git ✅ HTTPS connections — all external APIs use secure protocols ✅ No tracking — no analytics or user profiling ✅ Open source — code is transparent and auditable

📊 Cost Breakdown (Monthly)

ServiceFree Tier LimitEst. Cost @ Limit

NewsAPI100 req/day $0 (free tier)

OpenAI GPT-3.5N/A~ $5–15 (usage-based)

gTTSUnlimited $0 (free)

Streamlit Cloud3 public apps $0 (free)

Total- $0–15/month

🎯 Use Cases

✅ Senior citizens listening to news in their mother tongue ✅ Rural communities with limited access to digital content ✅ Visually impaired individuals accessing news independently ✅ Language learners practicing Indian languages ✅ Senior care homes playing news for group listening ✅ Government initiatives for digital inclusion

🔮 Future Roadmap

• Mobile app
• Podcast-style news updates (scheduled reading sessions)
• Browser extension for reading any web page aloud
• Telegram/WhatsApp bot interface

📚 Lessons Learned

1. Accessibility isn’t an afterthought — design for seniors from day one
2. Free APIs have limits — always have a fallback strategy
3. User testing is critical — what seems simple to developers confuses seniors
4. Documentation matters — especially for open source projects
5. Multilingual support requires careful metadata management
6. Open source wins — community contributions improve everything

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Streamlit — for making web apps simple
• OpenAI — for powerful summarization
• gTTS — for free text-to-speech
• NewsAPI — for news data

🎉 Conclusion

**Akashvani** demonstrates that building inclusive technology doesn’t require reinventing the wheel — it’s about thoughtful integration of existing tools to solve real problems. By combining accessible UI design, multilingual AI, and smart API orchestration, we’ve created a tool that brings the digital world closer to millions of seniors across India. Akashvani here resonates, Sanskrit term meaning “voice from the sky” or “voice from heaven”, is now speaking their language.

📝 Call to Action

• ⭐ Star the repo on GitHub:
• 🐛 Report issues or suggest features — support@cxloop.co
• 💬 Join the discussion on community channels
• 🚀 Deploy it for your community
• 📢 Share with seniors in your network