A Sad day for us in Canada, and who knows elsewhere!

[Rich Caloggero]

Making audio books is a very labor intensive process. Think how long it
takes to read a book aloud. Then think about how much time and effort it
takes to do this well. Then think about doing this for one million books
each year (or whatever the number of new books published is per year - some
rediculous number). This quickly becomes unmanagable. However, for many many
people, this is the only way to get such information. In the US, I believe
we have on the order of one to two million audio books all told in our
entire NLS (national library service for the Blind and Physically
Handicapped) system.
To be optomistic, when text to speech technology matures, computers may do
more of this reading. However, I still don't know how emotional content will
be conveyed audibly via TTS. This will require much more semantic analysis
of language, something which simply isn't possible and probably won't be any
time soon. In the next five years, text to speech will probably mature to a
point where inflection will be synthesized to some extent, but reading an
entire book is so much more enjoyable when it is read propperly. Listening
to large amounts of computer generated speech really fatigues me. I don't
see this changing in any real way in the next five years.

Just my opinion...

                    Rich Caloggero

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kirk Wood" <cpt.kirk at 1tree.net>
To: "Speakup at Braille. Uwo. Ca (E-mail)" <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: 30 January, 2002 5:31 PM
Subject: Re: A Sad day for us in Canada, and who knows elsewhere!


It is truely a sad day. Of course I still wonder why the either or
syndrom? I don't normally listen to books, but have enjoyed listening to a
couple my roomie has (she is blind not me). If the books are read well
then perhaps some of the cost could be recovered by making the same
recording available to sighted people. Not to mention that I know of
several who would listen to more books if they were not often abridged.

I think it is time to call our governments into partnerships. The truth is
that there is a secondary market developing for many of the same
technologies that assist the blind. The most logical thing to me would be
to support development of the technology hoping that it can also find its
way into a secondary market of sighted people. If in partnership the cost
could be recouped to spend on the next thing to be developed.

The same should go for electronic books. I fail to see why there isn't a
huge effort to make the same titles available to the sighted world in the
same basic format.

=======
Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk at 1tree.net

Nowlan's Theory:
        He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from
        the next freeway exit.