From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from fort-point-station.mit.edu ([18.7.7.76]) by speech.braille.uwo.ca with esmtp (Exim 3.32 #1 (Debian)) id 16WHOB-0002fm-00 for ; Thu, 31 Jan 2002 08:36:32 -0500 Received: from central-city-carrier-station.mit.edu (CENTRAL-CITY-CARRIER-STATION.MIT.EDU [18.7.7.72]) by fort-point-station.mit.edu (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id UAA15741 for ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:14:37 -0500 (EST) Received: from melbourne-city-street.mit.edu (MELBOURNE-CITY-STREET.MIT.EDU [18.7.21.86]) by central-city-carrier-station.mit.edu (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id UAA15193 for ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:14:32 -0500 (EST) Received: from rich (208-59-250-51.c3-0.smr-ubr1.sbo-smr.ma.cable.rcn.com [208.59.250.51]) by melbourne-city-street.mit.edu (8.9.2/8.9.2) with SMTP id UAA25586 for ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:14:31 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <001d01c1a9f4$ae259ee0$6401a8c0@cable.rcn.com> From: "Rich Caloggero" To: References: Subject: Re: A Sad day for us in Canada, and who knows elsewhere! Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:14:49 -0500 Organization: MIT ATIC Lab MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4807.1700 Sender: speakup-admin@braille.uwo.ca Errors-To: speakup-admin@braille.uwo.ca X-BeenThere: speakup@braille.uwo.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.7 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca X-Reply-To: "Rich Caloggero" List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: 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" To: "Speakup@Braille. Uwo. Ca (E-mail)" 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@1tree.net Nowlan's Theory: He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from the next freeway exit.