Audiobooks from memos, presentations and even books.

2 Oct 2012 - 4:27am
32 weeks ago
3 replies
2496 reads
Ali Naqvi
2008

Hello members,

I am about to make some research on an idea. Basically its an online company which wants to create audiobooks from memos, presentations and even books.

Why?  People have a need in the fast society to memorize presentations, etc. and dont have time to read in a car, packed public transportation etc. The audiobook will allow just that. There are computerized voices but they suck and cannot come close to an audiobook produced by a human.

I personally think that it will be difficult to create audio for visual information such as graphs, pictures etc.

As you all are experienced interaction designers/ Uxer Experience practitioners, I would like to hear your view on this.

DO you think there is a need for such a product and if so, is there a way I can overcome the visual graphics "problem"?

 

Regards

 

Ali

Comments

2 Oct 2012 - 4:39am
Nathan Hornby
2011

I couldn't possibly comment on the need for the service (although it sounds interesting) - I am however very interested in the responses you get with relation to how to represent graphical data audiably.

Technically speaking, if we're talking graphs specifically, then they're a visual way to represent data.  So perhaps rather than considering how to audiably represent a graph, you should be focussing on representing the data itself?

I wonder if this is an issue that the visually impaired have already tackled audiably?

Either way I'm staying tuned and I hope you get some solid responses.

2 Oct 2012 - 4:53am
Nathan Hornby
2011

Just tracked this down, thought it might be of some use (http://ncam.wgbh.org/invent_build/web_multimedia/accessible-digital-media-guide/guideline-f-graphs):

In recordings of textbooks on audiotape or CD for use by blind students, narrators routinely describe graphs and charts in words. A carefully scripted description can convey the main points of a graph. This text can be displayed on screen for use by assistive technology, delivered directly by the product with text-to-speech, or delivered programmatically through an accessibility API. See the section on access issues for selected development environments for information on accessibility APIs. The text should describe the layout of the graph, the location of variables on the graph, and the overall trend. Here is an example from the National Braille Association Tape Recording Manual (listed in Appendix 4, Guides to Spoken Mathematics

4 Oct 2012 - 9:25am
Nathan Hornby
2011

Tried to reply to this post 3 times now - either not getting past moderation or something's broken - awesome for the interaction design association ay? ;)

If you want to discuss this a little more shoot me a message @nathanhornby or any other contact method at www.nathanhornby.com as I have a little info and ideas on how to approach it.

Happy to help, but IxDA clearly doesn't want me to.

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