speakup and festival

[Hugh Esco]

Am I to understand from this thread that it is possible to run speakup with 
a software synthesizer like Festival or eflte?  I built a Debian machine 
with emacspeak and eflite for a colleague of mine.  I'd love to make it 
possible for him to hear the computer from startup.  But I had understood 
that we'd need to find the funds for a hardware synthesizer before that 
would be possible.  Was I mistaken?

-- Hugh Esco