Trek lit and Text to Speatch. A plee to the authors.

[Blackbird]

In the past, if you were Blind or dyslexic or had other reading impairments then your options were limited. There were ways to get access to reading material, but they had to be dealt with through special channels and could take quite some time to sort out.

But now there is a far better way. The advent of E-books and their asociated readers has opened up a new ,ore mainstream way to provide people who are, for whatever reason, print impaired with a quick, easy and mainstream way to gane access to the same reading materials as everyone else. At least that was our hope....

Unfortunately though things haven't quite worked out that way. In many cases the Text to Speatch capability of E-book readers is being disabled, thus denying print impaired people access to a books.

I am thinking mainly of the Amazon Kindle when I write this as it is clearly labled on their site when a E-book isn't Text to Speatch compaatable. I can't say with certainty if the same number of books aren't TTS friendly on other devices sutch as the Ipad as I haven't had a chance to investigate.

In researching why this potentially wonderfull feature is disabled I have learned that it is done at the behest of the authors and publishers. In most cases out of some ill founded fear that the TTS will somehow impact on the sale of audio books!

As a blind person and a trek fan I am extremely unhappy with this situation. Just about every trek book brought out in the last few years has the TTS disabled, thus denying me and who knows how many others the oppertunity to purchase and enjoy the further adventures of our favourite trek crews.

I know from my time here that a number of the writers visit this forum, and to them I say the following....

Please Please Please, when you are producing your fine works. Give some thought to those who may not be able to read the words, but who still yearn for the story. Ask the publishers to enable the Text to Speatch function on your books. You have nothing to fear in terms of audio book sales. A computerized reading voice will never compete with an actors narration. Plus, it's not like we're saturated with audio books for trek at the moment, and even when we do get them they are often abridged. Enabeling TTS could potentially open the world of trek lit to many more fans who would be happy to purchase the books, safe in the knowledge that they would be able to enjoy them.

I hope that this stirs up a little debate on the subject. In the trek universe disability is not a barrior to achievment and enjoyment. Why should it be in this one?

 

[Scout101]

I'm sure it's not the authors, but a publisher decision. Not sure how much sway the authors would have over essentially a business decision.

That being said, it's a really SHITTY business decision, and borderline discriminatory. TTS isn't quite up to the levels of an audio book read by an actor, so don't see the overlap. MOST of these books aren't being converted to audio books anyway, so only occasionally would there even BE an overlap in sales to worry about in the first place.

I'd complain to Simon and Schuster directly, maybe CBS as well. Doesn't hurt them to check the box and allow this, but by not doing so, discriminates against the blind and sight-impaired by removing an accessibility feature that would otherwise exist. May be some sort of consumer protection groups you could raise the complaint to.

 

[donners22]

That must be very frustrating. Why on earth would they disable such a feature? Surely it would be only an advantage to the publisher to have it available.

 

[Christopher]

I'm sure it's not the authors, but a publisher decision. Not sure how much sway the authors would have over essentially a business decision.

None, as far as I know. I can say with certainty that I've never been consulted on whether to disable the text-to-speech feature; I didn't even know there was one. And I certainly wouldn't have asked them to disable it had I been consulted.

Once we deliver the manuscript and fulfill our contractual obligations, we writers have done our part. Beyond that, it belongs to the publisher and they can do whatever they want to it. They give us a say in the copyediting and proofreading of the text, but otherwise it's out of our hands.

 

[BillJ]

Looks like they would want to be able to continue to sell items to an aging fanbase. But what do I know?

 

[Daddy Todd]

Early versions of e-reader software had text-to-speech features, but the publishers (and writer's organizations) lobbied to have them removed. They argued that text-to-speech would kill the sales of recorded audiobooks, which were expected to be a big part of both the publisher's and writer's revenue streams. So the feature was removed in more recent versions of e-readers (I think the first generation Kindle even had the feature, but later models didn't.)

Anyway, it seems I recall that it was recently determined that e-readers couldn't be legally prevented from doing text-to-speech, but I don't know if anyone has re-introduced the feature.

Everyone in the chain is now financially incented to support audiobook sales, so I don't think Amazon is likely to put the feature back into the Kindle and undercut Audible's sales.

That's a shame, as the vast majority of books (both dead-tree and e-) will never be recorded as audiobooks, which means they are inaccessible to the visually impaired or people with reading disorders.

 

[Blackbird]

I'm sure it's not the authors, but a publisher decision. Not sure how much sway the authors would have over essentially a business decision.

None, as far as I know. I can say with certainty that I've never been consulted on whether to disable the text-to-speech feature; I didn't even know there was one. And I certainly wouldn't have asked them to disable it had I been consulted.

Once we deliver the manuscript and fulfill our contractual obligations, we writers have done our part. Beyond that, it belongs to the publisher and they can do whatever they want to it. They give us a say in the copyediting and proofreading of the text, but otherwise it's out of our hands.

Thank you for the insight into this situation.

I am glad to have been able to bring this situation to your attention. I would hope that you aggree with me in that this situation is quite unfortunate, in terms of it's impact on those who are unable to gane enjoyment from the printed versions of your work.

Do you have any suggestions as to how I could attempt to pursue this matter with those who may be responsable for the decision to disable the TTs?

 

[Christopher]

Sorry, but like I said, that's not handled on my end of things. I don't work at Simon & Schuster. I've never even been in the building. I'm a freelancer, an outside contractor. Like Scout101 said, you need to contact the publisher about this.

 

[BillJ]

Early versions of e-reader software had text-to-speech features, but the publishers (and writer's organizations) lobbied to have them removed. They argued that text-to-speech would kill the sales of recorded audiobooks, which were expected to be a big part of both the publisher's and writer's revenue streams. So the feature was removed in more recent versions of e-readers (I think the first generation Kindle even had the feature, but later models didn't.)

Anyway, it seems I recall that it was recently determined that e-readers couldn't be legally prevented from doing text-to-speech, but I don't know if anyone has re-introduced the feature.

Everyone in the chain is now financially incented to support audiobook sales, so I don't think Amazon is likely to put the feature back into the Kindle and undercut Audible's sales.

That's a shame, as the vast majority of books (both dead-tree and e-) will never be recorded as audiobooks, which means they are inaccessible to the visually impaired or people with reading disorders.

I've got a third-generation Kindle that I bought in January that has text-to-speech feature. I've bought many books including new releases that have text-to-speech.

 

[Blackbird]

The assumption that TTS could cut into the sales of audio books is almost laughable.

It makes me wonder if the people who thought this have ever listened to any kind of TTS engine. Yes you can get some fairly human sounding ones but they can in no way match the delivery of a real honest to god human in their narative capabilitys. They are a vital tool of the visually impaired, in fact I'm using 1 at this very moment. But it certainly isn't the same as a human voice. Perhaps if they'd researched this a bit more they would have realized that blatently obvious fact.

Although it is in any case irrelevant since, as we all know, trek audio books are rather thin on the ground these days.

 

[captcalhoun]

sidenote, just for my own curiousity; how does text-to-speech cope with the weird and wonderful alien names like the Andorians have or Klingon stuff? i mean, i have enough trouble as a human figuring out how to pronounce stuff, without some machine doing it...

 

[UssGlenn]

Sounds like you need some national organization to raise a stink and threaten to sue everybody. The bad press alone should make a difference.

 

[Blackbird]

sidenote, just for my own curiousity; how does text-to-speech cope with the weird and wonderful alien names like the Andorians have or Klingon stuff? i mean, i have enough trouble as a human figuring out how to pronounce stuff, without some machine doing it...

It depends which TTS engine is being used. Some of them do quite well. Don't know how well a Kindle would do it as Ive never actualy used 1..Think an Ipad mite do well. I actually heard one of them in action yesterday and it's Voiceover system sounded quite a lot like a TTS engine I have as part of 1 of my screen readers. Sometimes it's the names of people which can cause the most trubble!!! For instance Worf is often pronounced as Werf. But for the most part it's just a case of assuming that it's close to the mark if the name is one that hasn't ben in the TV show. Obviously that's just based on me and my screen reader rather than an e-book TTS system. But you get the idea.

 

[Daddy Todd]

Early versions of e-reader software had text-to-speech features, but the publishers (and writer's organizations) lobbied to have them removed. They argued that text-to-speech would kill the sales of recorded audiobooks, which were expected to be a big part of both the publisher's and writer's revenue streams. So the feature was removed in more recent versions of e-readers (I think the first generation Kindle even had the feature, but later models didn't.)

Anyway, it seems I recall that it was recently determined that e-readers couldn't be legally prevented from doing text-to-speech, but I don't know if anyone has re-introduced the feature.

Everyone in the chain is now financially incented to support audiobook sales, so I don't think Amazon is likely to put the feature back into the Kindle and undercut Audible's sales.

That's a shame, as the vast majority of books (both dead-tree and e-) will never be recorded as audiobooks, which means they are inaccessible to the visually impaired or people with reading disorders.

I've got a third-generation Kindle that I bought in January that has text-to-speech feature. I've bought many books including new releases that have text-to-speech.

Not a Kindle owner, so I was remembering what I'd read about the device. Or perhaps misremembering... Maybe they never took it out, maybe they put it back, or maybe they took it out in the 4th generation.

What generation Kindle are we up to these days, anyway?

 

[BillJ]

What generation Kindle are we up to these days, anyway?

The new ones would probably be considered 4th generation... so you could easily be right.

 

[Scrambo]

I didnt even know there was such as a feature as TTS, i just thought that was partially why audio books came about in order to help those who are visually impaired or have reading disability. My hubby prefers audiobooks as he has trouble reading.

Sounds like its a good feature especially when audiobooks aren't available & one which clearly for some reason publishers arent interested in for some reason. Like everyone says I would go to either the publishers and see if they can explain why this feature has been disabled without a just reason. Also go the organisations & charities set up for the visually impaired and bring it up with them. You never know it could be that other have brought up this same issue and with enough support this TTS issue can be raised as others have stated to publishers via them as well as the media.

 

[JD]

Yeah, I have to agree that removing the TTS is a really crappy thing to do. Not only does it mean that people who are unable or have difficulty reading text, but it also removes some the stuff that IMO makes Ebooks better than Pbooks. To me that seems like the kind of thing you would want to emphasis, not remove.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Sounds like something such organizations as the Braille Institute, the Jewish Braille Institute (does that make the original BI Goyish?), the Jewish Guild for the Blind, Junior Blind of America, Helen Keller International, the American Foundation for the Blind, the Blind Children's Learning Center, the Blinded Veterans' Association, and so forth, ought to lobby for.

 

[zar]

Since when is TTS a feature that can be "disabled" on a per-book basis? It's a software feature, not a content feature. Even if it's an artificial restriction supported by e-book readers, what's stopping anyone from copying and pasting the text into a general-purpose TTS program to read it for them?

 

[David cgc]

sidenote, just for my own curiousity; how does text-to-speech cope with the weird and wonderful alien names like the Andorians have or Klingon stuff? i mean, i have enough trouble as a human figuring out how to pronounce stuff, without some machine doing it...

It tries. It's probably a bit better than a person with some of them, since it doesn't worry about getting it wrong, it just applies it's rules to figure out what phonemes go where. I just tried "Thirishar ch'Thane" on my Mac, for instance, and it worked fine except for the "ch" part, which it read as "C H"/"cee aich".

I'm not sure how to do it on Windows, but in a Mac, open up a document in text edit, type (or paste) in whatever you want read, and select "Edit > Speech > Start Speaking" from the menu bar to experiment yourself. There's also at least one on-line service, but it's a bit slower, for obvious reasons.