I don't know the extent of kttsd support in akregator and kalarm. Although likely a handy feature for a minority of users, there should be both compile and user options to disable kttsd support.

kttsd is only a frontend wrapper to a backend speech engine. Without the backend engine kttsd is impotent and just another automatically launched process --- running fast to nowhere.

The compilation configuration option could be something like -DBUILD_SPEECH_CLIENT.

The compile option is handy for packagers who want to build a lean-and-mean or minimal Trinity package set, such as for limited hardware.

User options would be a check box in the app General settings. The user option would prevent the kttsd from being launched.

When -DBUILD_SPEECH_CLIENT=OFF, the user configuration check box would be ghosted/disabled or does not appear at all. Ghosted/disabled seems better because that provides users a nominal clue toward a solution (recompiling).

The user check box What's This tooltip should include information that a speech backend is needed to make use of kttsd. Perhaps too an informational popup kdialog appears when users enables kttsd in either app to remind them of the backend requirement.

I consider this a bug and not an enhancement request. :-)