[access-uk] Re: Ethics of book sharing services
- From: "Damon Rose" <damon.rose@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:08:08 +0100
The trouble with speech synths that are meant to sound more like human
beings is that you can hear the samples being pulled and pushed around
to create sounds ... So we have the equivalent of audio digital
artefacts occuring. Or something like that. Basically it doesn't flow
very well but electronic speech synths do flow nicely even if they don't
sound very human. It's the continuity I like.
...Damon
-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of James O'Dell
Sent: 20 April 2005 16:56
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Ethics of book sharing services
Hi Justin
It's a shame you can't get on with reading using synthetic speech. I
use
British English Eloquence and am perfectly happy reading with that.
Have
you thought about buying the A T & T natural voices? They are quite
large
and take up a lot of memory when running, but are more
realistic-sounding
and easier to listen to. There are also the voices from cepstral
(www.cepstral.com), not as realistic as A T & t, but perhaps a bit
better
than your screen reader voices. there is Realspeak (sold by Portset as
Keyspeak, www.portset.co.uk), but I hesitate to recommend that as I
think
it's expensive for what it is.
James
----- Original Message -----
From: "Justin R" <mypc128@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 2:05 PM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Ethics of book sharing services
>
> "Ray's Home"
>>Subject: [access-uk] Re: Ethics of book sharing services
>
>
>> An 'e-book standard has to emerge >which in turn will depend on part
>> on
>> e->book hardware becoming an attractive >alternative to the ordinary
>> print book. >Whatever that standard turns out to be, >PDF,
>> Microsoft,
>> whatever, thorough >accessibility has to be part of it, with
>> >speech/Braille output being an easy >option. Many will accept
synthetic
>> >speech as a way of reading vastly more >material; but I for one
want my
>> books >read professionally by a human.
>
> Yes, totally agree. I can't get on with books being red by synthetic
> voices, particularly coming from our screen readers.
>
>
>> If that is to happen on a much larger >scale then an infra-structure
>> has
>> to >come into being whereby spoken word >editions are handled by
>> companies who >do not see readers as the only source >of demand for
their
>> product, and their >are other people, print handicapped in >whatever
way,
>> who would much prefer >to be read to.
>
> Exactly! that point reminds me on why I have never seen an alliance
> being
> made up of say; RNIB, action for the blind and dislexia organistions.
> Together, they'd be a real force and I'm sure there are a many
dislexic
> people out there who have it severe enough not to be able to read, let
> alone well enough.
>
>>Maybe such companies could be jointly >financed by large publishers,
>>with
>>some >state finance too. I'd envisage a form of >organisation
partaking
>>of social >enterprise ethics and the idea of a state >agency being
>>combined into audio >publishing enterprises. Afraid I do not >see
the
>>RNIB qualifying to be a >candidate for such an enterprise given >its
track
>>record.
>
> a shame as, the RNIB could be very useful with this. I'm not sure
> their
> "right to read" compagn carries much clout with anyone outside of the
> access to read materials for us visually impaired.
>
> JUstin
>
>
>
>> As things stand, I think initiatives like Bookshare are a good move,
>> considering that mainstream publishers are so stubbornly determined
to
>> evade their responsibilities to us. Seems no one in this country is
>> prepared to work hard enough or to kick asse as the Americans would
say,
>> to make it happen.
>> Ray
>>
>> Personal emails: Email me at
>> mailto:ray-48@xxxxxxxx
>>
>
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