This paper describes work in progress concerning the ad-

equate modeling of fast speech in unit selection speech synthesis systems, mostly having in mind blind and visually impaired users. Initially, a survey of the main characteristics of fast speech will be given. Subsequently, strategies for fast speech production will be discussed. Certain requirements concerning the ability of a speaker of a fast speech unit selection inventory are drawn. The following section deals with a perception study where a selected speaker's ability to speak fast is investigated. To conclude, a preliminary perceptual analysis of the recordings for the speech synthesis corpus is presented.

Index Terms: speech synthesis, unit selection, fast speech