Have your users follow these steps if your applet is based upon JDK 1.1: Elan TTS transforms any IT generated text into speech and reads it out loud.
For details and requirements see the Festival download page.
Preliminary support is available for Windows 95 and NT.
It offers a full text to speech system with various APIs, as well an environment for development and research of speech synthesis techniques.
It supports all the European language versions of ViaVoice - US & UK English, French, German, Italian and Spanish - plus Japanese.
The following implementations are known to exist.
The Java Speech API is a freely available specification and therefore anyone is welcome to develop an implementation.