ICCHP- Summer University
Masaryk University - Telč
Visually impaired persons, audiobooks
and e-books
Jan J. Engelen
Kath. Univ. Leuven & Kamelego
jan.engelen@esat.kuleuven.be
August 3, 2011
e-book reading
• Most e-books can be read on a computer but
their growing popularity is mainly due to the
availability of handy, portable, lightweight
devices
• Display technology: electronic ink
(very crisp image, but external lighting is
needed)
• Due to cheap computer memory currently
over 2000 e-books can be stored in one
device
• 2010: e-readers in competition with iPad and
lookalikes!
Amazon kindle 3
Also available in
software for many
platforms
Cybook Bookeen
IDPF
The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) provides impressive statistics
on the booming US e-book industry
e-book standards
• Besides popular formats such as HTML, RTF and
PDF that can be read by all e-book readers,
following major e-book standards are used:
– Amazon Kindle has his own format, loosely based on
an older French Mobipocket format
– Sony uses the ePub format which is an Open
standard for e-books
– the Cybooks use an Adobe - protected - PDF format
• Except for public domain books, an encryption
feature (DRM, Digital rights management) is used
on all e-books; on the other side DRM is almost
completely abondoned for audio/music distribution
How to get e-books?
• Evidently, most e-books simply can be
downloaded from the internet.
• To permit buying books “on the move” a
permanent internet connection is needed.
The Kindle had this data connection built in
(and the cost was included in the e-book
price!).
• Nowadays this is a standard access
method for smartphones, iPads etc.
Cosy listening corner for
audiobooks (Amsterdam)
Specialised production centres for
audiobooks
• Audiobooks are very important for most of the reading
impaired persons (less then 10% is fluent in Braille)
• Audiobooks have been distributed on vinyl disks, tape,
cassettes…
• Daisy consortium was created in 1996 to produce a new
worldwide standard for talking books on cd
• Daisy was almost uniquely developed for delivering info to
visually impaired persons, so it is not Universal Design!
Daisy’s basic requirements
• Ability to skim the text, phrase by phrase or section by
section, where “section” is a collection of phrases.
• Ability to search for different parts in the text-based table
of contents.
• Ability to search for specific pages in the talking book.
• Ability to place and search for bookmarks in the book.
• Ability to underline and make notes in the talking book.
Daisy Players (CD based)
Compact Daisy/audiobook Players
Reading from SD-card cards (left and middle),
or from the web via a mobile phone (right)
Audio players with internet
connection
• basically: internet radio receivers
• No real Daisy book support yet, but that’s coming
• WiFi versions under development
Webbox (NL)
Adela (SE)
Alternative approach: Daisy players with WiFi connection and erasable
memories are forthcoming !
Commercial approaches
Two different commercial approaches: Audible.com (top) and
LeisureAudiobooks (bottom)
Copyright protection measures
Special formats
• Audible.com has developed its proprietary .aa format and provides
free software for playing (legal) .aa files on 290 platforms. This
format also caters for different quality levels. Some files can be
transformed into audio-cd files and can be written onto audio-CD’s
• Apple i-Tunes used mainly the proprietary MP4 format (a container
format, including the media and DRM info) which made it impossible
for some time to use the files on non-iPod players.
• But the most striking difference of all these solutions with the Daisy
format is the lack of any sensible navigation system through the
audio files. The available solution, the Daisy standard, is not used in
the commercial audiobook world !
DRM
•
copyright protection is often seen as copying protection. Digital rights management
(DRM) was once seen by the music industry as the method to prohibit illegal copying.
In practice however it lead to quite a lot of customer frustration as it hindered copying
in general or made it impossible to play (also legally acquired) files on a whole series
of devices.
•
In practice, all widely-used DRM systems have been defeated or circumvented when
deployed to enough customers.
•
Protection of audio and visual material is especially difficult due to the existence of
the "analogue hole" and there are even suggestions that an effective DRM is logically
impossible for this reason.
–
•
The "analogue hole" means simply that all audio or video data have to be transformed into
an analogue signal (varying pressure waves in air) to be interpretable by human beings;
but analogue signals can be re-digitised aftwards!
Conclusion:
Internet music stores have now more or less given up DRM protection. E.g. it was
found that a new iTunes music track (with DRM) made available from Apple needed
less than 3 minutes to become available elsewhere on the web in an unprotected
audio format.
Interactive information (complexbooks, video, navigable Daisy etc.) is much harder to
copy!
audiobooks
• Other names: “[digital] talking books”,
“spoken books”, “narrated books”
• Are produced nowadays by two different
“worlds”:
– Specialised production centres for persons
with a reading impairment - since many years
– Commercial publishers: rather recent
phenomenon
Daisy books (1)
• For use within the community of print impaired
persons the Daisy e-book and audiobook standard
has been developed almost 15 years ago.
• The Daisy format not only links the text to the
audio version of the same book but permits also
an extensive tree-like navigation through the
document. This results in easy jumping to parts of
the book, including down to the sixth level in a
table of contents.
• Furthermore Daisy permits to produce several
kinds of e-books such as text-only, audio-only, text
& audio, text & images etc.
Daisy books (2)
• Technically the format (as of version 3.0) is based
on a well defined set of xml, and audio files.
• Daisy is promoted by the Daisy consortium and
their standards are nowadays recognised by
international bodies.
• Daisy books technically consist of a collection of
computer files that can be stored on a cd (very
popular as it can be read with a portable cd player)
but also on any other computer medium including
SD-cards (popular for pocket size readers) and
simply via the internet (downloads and/or
streaming)
Daisy books (3)
• Despite a decennium of efforts the Daisy standard is still not
in use outside the field of print impaired users.
• To make it more popular, several open-source software
solutions have been developed. E.g. it became possible to
produce a Daisy talking book directly from within Microsoft
Word
• Within the European Aegis project three add-ons for
OpenOffice.org (file extension: *.odt) have been developed at
K.U.Leuven (the work on odt2daisy had started earlier at
UPMC Paris):
– an odt to Daisy convertor
– an odt to Daisy talking book convertor
– an odt to Braille convertor
• Furthermore a test suite was developed recently at
K.U.Leuven to check the structure of ODT files before the
translations are executed
Daisy books (4)
• The Daisy consortium itself focuses on:
– DAISY Online Delivery Protocol:
this is basically a definition of SOAP messages
permitting easy web based content provision (details
are following)
– Daisy version 4.0:
this standard will permit an easier transfer of e-books
and talking books to the ePub format and therefore
constitutes a bridge between the two “worlds”
– Copyright protection for Daisy books.
Up to now such protection was deemed unnecessary
as special equipment or software was needed to read
a Daisy book; but this is not true anymore
E-book readers as audiobook
devices
• Starting with the Kindle-2 in 2009, a text-to-speech
module had been incorporated in an e-reader device.
– This feature permits to listen to the text and was very much
appreciated by print impaired persons (persons with low
vision, blindness, dyslexia or a severe motor handicap).
– Unfortunately this possibility was turned off soon after.
– This lead to several US cases in court (e.g. National
Federation of the Blind vs the Arizona State University that
planned to provide university course material in Kindle
format only).
• Another bottleneck is commanding the e-reader itself.
– no auditive feedback when choosing commands on the
Kindle DX.
– At the end of 2010 the Kindle 3 solved this issues, but many
listeners are complaining about the robotic voice....
Growing synergies
between commercial and not-for-profit audiobook publishers
• Commercial publishers often state rightfully that their products also
benefit reading impaired persons but they show no interest in using
the Daisy standard.
• On the other hand, specialised production centres are clearly
exploring the commercial possibilities of their large archives
• Specialised and commercial productions may go hand in hand: e.g.
the audio recording of Terry Darlington's book “Narrow Dog To
Carcassonne” was done by the UK Royal National Institute of the
Blind (RNIB) both as a DAISY Digital talking book for RNIB clients
and also as a commercial audio book on CD (ISIS publishing).
• In the Netherlands, the largest specialised audiobook production
centre, "Dedicon" had created at the end of 2006 a commercial
branch, named Lecticus. Books but it appeared not to be
commercially viable.
Some Issues
• 99% of both commercial and specialised audiobooks are
read by human narrators
– nowadays Text-to-Speech software (TTS) produces a
reasonable quality for synthetic voices
– sometimes TTS is the only viable option
(for a daily newspaper e.g.)
– Even for human narrators, there is no standardised way for
pronouncing formulae !
• Cataloguing pitfalls
– Quality, coverage, narrator’s name etc..
• High speed daisy production (e.g. for daily newspapers)
– Requires specialised software solutions
• Internet distribution
– Often hindered by copyright and other legal problems
• On line delivery system for (audio-) daisy
books, magazines and newspapers
– Based on daisy online standard
– Single login planned
• But also a collaboration between several
types of organisations is required and often
tough to realise…
• Newpapers and magazines will be available
by the end of 2011 on:
www.anderslezen.be
Conclusions
• The market of e-books and e-readers finally
has taken off, but iPad becomes important
too
• Although commercial audiobook production
remains a byproduct of standard and
traditional book publishing, new applications
e.g. for print impaired persons seem to be
growing
• But a tough copyright hurdle is still to be
taken before e-books routinely also can be
turned into audio or talking books
Thank you
Jan Engelen
Kath. Univ. Leuven (Belgium)
jan.engelen@esat.kuleuven.be
Acknowledgements
Support for this study came from:
• Kath. Univ. Leuven,
Research group on Document Architectures & Center for Equal Chances and Diversity
•
Kamelego Foundation