We should have a tool that makes IPA transcriptions (e.g. /ˈbɜːrmɪŋəm/ for "Birmingham") hearable as audio.
The tool should work for multiple languages, not just English.
See the tool at: http://ipa-reader.xyz/
There's a blog post about it here: https://cuttlesoft.com/blog/pronouncing-things-with-amazons-polly/
It uses Amazon Polly, which may not be available to us, at least not in bulk.
For future reference, please use the feature request form (linked from the top of the task creation page) to create feature requests. Thanks.
There is also a Chrome extension to do this (I haven't used it): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wikipedia-ipa-speaker/jkgihpigffcfeebgedpklldebdibbnne
According to discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651734 it uses https://www.ipaaudio.click/audio
That discussion also lists other IPA -> speech engines.
Finding a suitable freely licensed IPA --> speech engine is likely to be a primary hurdle here. If we can do that, then it's just a matter of coding and implementing. There's a clear potential benefit if this is taken up (enough so that it might be worth making a wishlist proposal for it).
LinguaLibre.org has enough words with both audios and IPA values in wiktionary to mine them, gather tens thousands audio.wav + IPA string pairs, and train a proper, Wikimedia IPA text to speech system. It's between one week and one month project depending on the developer's skills and familiarity with our mediawiki / wikibase APIs.
For all subscribers, wanted to make you aware of the project page associated with this wish
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Generate_Audio_for_IPA