A cool feature in Smart Things that started with Sonos but then moved on to iTunes and VLC was custom audio notifications. Here is a blog link to the iTunes version. http://blog.smartthings.com/news/smartthings-updates/new-smartapp-obything-music-lets-integrate-itunes-smartthings/
Here’s the VLC thing with a video demo. Demo show the custom notifications around the 4:15 mark.
I think Smart Things sends text to an amazon service that converts to spoken audio and transfers to your local player.
Is their a way to do this in HA?