Four digital content services were field tested as part of
this study. The nature of these services
varies considerably. Bookshare focuses
on scanned books that can be converted, among other things, to synthetic audio
books using text-to-speech software.
NetLibrary and OverDrive are both established companies that offer both textual ebooks and digital audio books (as well as
other types of digital content and services) primarily to libraries. Both of their digital audio book services are
based on the Windows Media Audio (WMA) file format, which can be downloaded for
playback on the user’s computer, transfer to any of a number of WMA-enabled
portable playback devices, or, in the case of OverDrive, burned onto a set of
CDs. TumbleTalkingBooks, on the other hand,
is using the Flash technology from Macromedia to offer streaming digital audio
books.
Note: A more detailed
description of the netLibrary, OverDrive, Tumble, and Audible.com digital audio
book services appeared in the July/August 2005 issue of Computers in Libraries, pages 6-8, 61-64.
Bookshare.org is a service that provides downloadable
scanned ebooks that can be used with patron-supplied text-to-speech software to
create on-demand synthesized digital audio books. Most of the ebooks in the Bookshare master
collection are scanned by individual members.
Bookshare leverages an exemption to
For the purposes of the MIDTB field tests, a demo CD
containing a sample text in DAISY and ASCII text formats, as well as an MP3
file containing a pre-generated synthetic speech recording of the text.
Note: A separate,
expanded field test of BookShare is planned for late 2005 and early 2006. Information about that field test is
available at the following URL:
http://www.tapinformation.com/Bookshare.htm
Text-to-Speech:
“I have accessed Bookshare books with both Eloquence via Open Book 7,
and the BrailleNote using the Keynote speech…. The Keynote speech is more
expressive.” “I listen to these books
on my
Nonlinear Navigation:
“When, there is a table of contents. I read the table of contents and
use the information with the JAWSFind Feature to jump to a particular place in
the text.”
Accuracy of the Texts: Users were impressed by the apparent accuracy
of these texts that began with a scanning process.
BRF Files: At
least one volunteer tester was very pleased to know that content from Bookshare
is available in BRF Braille format.
Sign-up Process:
“I have been involved with Bookshare since its beta days. The only thing I find annoying is the hoops
one has to jump through in order to join.
When I joined, for example, I had to get sighted help to fill out the
forms. That may have been simplified by
now….”
DAISY: “At
this time, I believe it is not possible to combine narrated files with text in
a full Daisy implementation with either bookshare windows orr
linux systems. This flaw would be a
slight dissappointment when reading fiction with Bookshare, but I would not
consider it a major drawback.”
Sound Quality:
At least one tester thought the sound quality was poor.
Variable Speed Playback: Several users expressed a desire for this
functionality.
Spellcheck:
One volunteer tester reported that she was unable to figure out a way to
spellcheck any of the words.
Most of the volunteer testers who tried the Bookshare demo
CD found the overall experience to be somewhat or very satisfactory. They seemed to prefer using their own screen
reader software to access the ebooks, rather than listen to a pre-generated MP3
synthetic digital audio book.
“Because of this experience with Bookshare, I plan to join
that service. I was not aware that the
use of their linux option (I am moving to linux operating system) allows use of
bookshare without a windows computer and the related exorbetant expense and
complexity of a windos screenreader.
Bookshare's linux option allows conversion of bookshare files to text
files for easy reading.”
“I think that out of the two things I tried for MIDTB,
BookShare and the Adobe Reader, Bookshare is far and away the best of the two. The ease of use. The
ability to choose between BRF and DAISY formats, the ability to keep the books,
reread, enjoy again, all these make it a wonderful experience.”
“Bookshare is a wonderful resource for reading material; now
I need a site to download extra hours in order to read all of the books!”
Please Note:
Beginning in late 2005 the
Early in 2005 netLibrary, a division of OCLC, and Recorded
Books LLC launched a downloadable digital audio book service for libraries and
library users. During the months of June
and July 184 print-impaired users were provided trial access to the full
collection of over 850 titles to test for the accessibility and general usability
of the service. At least 14 of the 184
testers were also volunteers in the MIDTB Project described in this report.
Digital audio books from netLibrary/Recorded Book are
available in DRM-protected Windows Media Audio (WMA) file format. Two file sizes (compression levels) were made
available: “radio quality” and “CD
quality”. The radio files are smaller
files designed for people who download content via dial-up access to the
Internet. The CD quality files were
larger and of higher quality. They were
designed for users with broadband access to the Internet. Also, if the tester wanted to transfer the
content to a portable audio playback device, he or she needed to download the
CD quality version of the titles. The
digital audio book files were delivered whole.
They were not divided into parts.
Because a separate report on the accessibility of netLibrary
digital audio books has been released, only the overall assessment is included
in this report. The URL for the full
report is:
http://www.tapinformation.com/netLibraryfinalreport.htm
The volunteers who participated in this two-month trial had
a wide variety of experiences and reactions to those experiences. Some volunteers thought this was the best
digital audio book system they had ever tried.
(Many of the testers currently use and subscribe to a variety of digital
audio book services, such as Audible.com and Bookshare.) Many of the volunteer testers noted that the
quality of the texts, the narration, and the sound was very high.
Others thought the overall system was barely functional and
marginally accessible. The content
website, the digital rights management system, and Microsoft’s Windows Media
Player software presented substantial accessibility challenges for a large
portion of the group of volunteer testers.
Two distinct aspects of OverDrive’s digital content services
were included in these field tests.
First, reported in this section is the accessibility and general
usability of text-to-speech renditions of their textual ebooks in Adobe PDF
format were field tested. This field
testing builds on a similar round of tests conducted during the first half of
2004. The URL for the final report on
that earlier test is:
http://www.tapinformation.com/OverDriveAdobefinal.htm
Nonlinear Navigation:
especially via the table of contents.
“Window-eyes and jfw [JAWS for Windows] have nice find commands in IE so
I can find what I want.”
Placemark: “I
liked… the fact that the software picked up where I left off in the document
when I reopened the book.”
Early Returns:
The volunteers liked the ability to return an ebook they had checked out
early, rather than wait for the circulation period to expire.
Quick, Convenient, Online Access to Current Content: “I
liked the convenience of using a computer at home to find current popular
reading material in both fiction and nonfiction categories using the overdrive
system over the internet.”
Configurable:
“Adobe is very configureable. I set it up to display the entire book in
Internet Explorer.”
Documentation:
“The JAWS tips for Adobe Reader were very helpful for me.”
Quality of the Text-to-Speech (Using JAWS and WindowEyes): “I used the Eloquence voice called (I think)
Reed. It was the default voice set for
screen reading by JAWS, speeded up quite a bit for my convenience in reading
quickly….: I have always found the voice I selected clear and reasonably
human-sounding while also being quite responsive when navigating, interrupting
speech, and so on.” “I used Eloquence,
the normal voice for Window-Eyes. I must
say I preferred it to Microsoft Sam!
He's awful!”
Display/Delivery Options: “The most annoying quality was that I had to
choose between being delivered the whole document at once in which case
software operation was so sluggish that I could not stand it and having the
document delivered in pages in which case I seemed to be spending an awful lot
of time hitting Control+PgDn and then navigating to the top of the page to read
a little more of the book.”
Downloading an eBook: “Downloading
was difficult with one of the books. I have some usable vision and needed it to finish the procedure by
using the mouse.”
Setting Up Adobe Reader via
Passport: “I found the process of
finnagling to get Adobe working was the most disappointing.”
Quality of the Text-to-Speech (Using Adobe Reader): “the voice in the Adobe Reader is totally inadequat/terrible”
Interface: “I
tried to get familiar with the navigation functionality of Adobe Reader and
found the interface rather confusing. It
was hard to figure out what the F6, Control+Tab, and other keys did. I just don't find it clear how the interface
works, and sometimes I had trouble getting back to the actual book
content. Some of this may be a function
of how JAWS and the Adobe Reader interact, however. Using a screen reader with other software
always influences the overall experience.”
Audio Description of Graphics: “I would have liked to be able to review the
title page information and felt a little cheated that I couldn't. The same holds true for pictures, reproduced
newspaper copy, and other facsimiles of information
sprinkled throughout the book. It's nice
that, when books are narrated by a human, some form of picture description is
usually given. I missed that in this
e-book.”
Returning a Book Early via Keystrokes: “With the prompting of a friend who is also
in the program, I took a look at the options for returning the book early. I discovered that this option can not be
enabled by using the normal keystrokes.
This is because the regular arrow keys do not work in the Adobe menu for
the bookshelf. You must use the mouse
commands to return a book early.”
No Transfer of Content to Handheld Device: For print-impaired users there are few
workable options for transferring this type of ebook content to a portable
handheld device then creating text-to-speech audible renditions.
Most of the volunteers who created and reviewed audio
renditions of these Adobe PDF ebooks had a somewhat or very satisfactory
experience. The accessibility and
general usability of text-to-speech audio renditions of textual ebooks in Adobe
PDF format continue to face major challenges.
Most of the volunteer testers much preferred using their screen reader
software, such as JAWS for Windows or WindowEyes, to access this content,
rather than the embedded text-to-speech engine associated with the Adobe Reader
software program.
“I found using Adobe Reader surprisingly painless. It sort
of had a reputation among us blind folk of being a real pain in the ass but I
didn't find that to be the case. I think the key is to have a good enough
machine and connection to handle it, and I'm sure XP helps. I much prefer
listening to human read audio books than those read by a synthesizer. But if
this was the only way I could get access to a particular book, it ain't bad.”
“I am glad I
learned how to use the Adobe Reader. It is a valuable resource for a visually
impaired person like myself. However, I did not enjoy
the system as much as I do books on tape or audible.com when reading for
pleasure.”
MIDTB volunteers also were involved in the testing and
development of OverDrive’s downloadable digital audio book service. Several volunteers tested various beta
versions of the OverDrive Media Console software that is used to playback
OverDrive digital audio books on one’s computer. The development of this software coincided
with the first few months of the MIDTB study.
The volunteers involved in the field testing of the beta
versions of the OverDrive Media Console software program made several key
accessibility and usability recommendations.
Variable speed playback and keystroke alternatives were the two most
important recommendations.
OverDrive incorporated the suggestions made by the MIDTB
volunteers into their new digital audio book service. To the best of our knowledge, this is the
first digital audio book service for the mainstream library and/or consumer
market that offers variable speed playback as a functionality.
OverDrive also created text-only documentation and narrated
audio versions of some of the key documentation.
The Unabridged downloadable digital audio book service (http://www.unabridged.info/) selected
OverDrive for its platform and content.
Unabridged currently is available to print-impaired individuals in five
states:
TumbleTalkingBooks using Macromedia Flash
technology to deliver streaming digital audio books directly to the user’s
computer. TumbleTalkingBooks is an online, 24/7 audio book library that includes
unabridged high quality audio versions of classics of American and world
literature, non-fiction, fiction, and children and teen books.
There are several
related Tumble products that may be of interest to print-impaired users. TumbleReadables are large print online books,
and the Tumble Book Library is a collection of animated children’s ebooks where
the narrated audio can be toggled on and off.
A recently launched service from TumbleBooks, Tumble Read-Alongs,
combines large print online books with steaming digital narrated audio book
content.
Streaming Audio:
People liked the fact that the digital audio book began playing back
almost immediately.
Unlimited Concurrent Users: Because the content is streamed, not checked
out and downloaded, the entire collection is available to everyone all the
time.
Variable Speed Playback: “It would also be good to have a way of
increase reading speed even if I lose speech quality. This feature exists on present casette
players from NLS.”
Macromedia Flash:
“Macromedia flash is NOT RECOMMENDED by World Wide Web Web Accessorability
www.w3.org/wai or by AFB consulting www.afb.org. This interface lacks keyboard ability to (1)
stop or start a book (2) pause (3) re-wind (4) fast
forward in small or larger increments.”
Transfer to Portable Playback Devices: Most users want the ability to transfer the
content to a portable playback device, so they can listen to a digital audio
book anywhere.
Several testers tried this service and generally found some
accessibility obstacles. Keystroke
alternatives are needed for all of the Micromedia Flash buttons and controls
used by this streaming audio book service.
One tester using the JAWS screenreader software reported that she could
not access any of the functions. She was
unable to stop playback or set bookmarks.
Another tester missed the ability to engage in nonlinear navigation or
to vary the playback speed.
Testing this service has had one tangible outcome. The talking book centers in