From their Science and Technology section.
Steve
Books for the Blind Go Digital
By CATHERINE GREENMAN
S INCE 1951, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, a nonprofit
organization based in Princeton, has recorded thousands of textbooks,
from kindergarten- to graduate-level, on cassette tapes that it makes
available to schools and to blind and dyslexic students.
Books on tape are a boon to students who don't read Braille or who
can't find a Braille edition of a particular textbook. (The
organization has put some 83,000 textbooks on tape, many of them not
available in Braille.) But the tapes, though not as cumbersome as
Braille books, can be unwieldy, with a typical 400-page book requiring
8 to 12 cassettes. Navigating hours of tape to find a specific page
can be tedious.
Now, academic life for blind or dyslexic students is about to get
easier. In the last year, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic
(www.rfbd.org) has started to record textbooks on CD's that can be
played on PC's or on special players, designed by such companies as
VisuAide or Plextor, that cost about $500.
The CD's hold up to 40 hours of recorded text, enough for the average
textbook, so they take up far less space in a student's backpack. And
instead of a series of beeps to get to a page or a chapter, the
student will be able to move through the text by pushing a button.
The organization has tested the CD recordings among about 1,100
students in the last year, primarily using CD players called the
Victor Reader and Plextalk. The players have a series of buttons that
identify their functions by voice.
Students who have tried the CD's say that using them will make it
easier to juggle several textbooks at a time. "The search and bookmark
functions are really what sets the technology apart from basic
audiocassette books," said Cary Supalo, a 26-year-old graduate student
at Penn State University who saw a demonstration on a Victor Reader,
by VisuAide.
The ability to speed up the reading without raising the voice pitch is
also a plus, Mr. Supalo said. "On a cassette it can sound like
chipmunks," he said.
Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic is equipping its 32 studios and
training staff. It must also work out digital rights arrangements with
publishers. New recordings of both old and new textbooks are expected
to be available to members of the organization by late next year, said
Morgan Roth, a spokeswoman.
The organization plans to enhance the CD's so that when they are
played on a personal computer, they will display text simultaneously,
allowing visually impaired students who can still read to follow along
with the spoken word. Producing the digital recordings, which requires
one volunteer who reads aloud and another who reads along to check for
mistakes, takes about the same time as recording the books on
cassette: about an hour and 45 minutes for every hour of spoken word.
John A. Churchill, senior vice president for operations at Recording
for the Blind and Dyslexic, said that the move to digital recordings
was costly but necessary. "It's a massive undertaking for us to
retrain our staff to learn how to record digitally, but it's eminently
worth it," he said.
"The equipment that allows us to record on cassette hasn't been
manufactured for years," he said, "and we didn't want to find
ourselves in a situation where a vendor could no longer supply us with
equipment." But the organization will continue to produce cassettes,
Mr. Churchill said, because demand is strong.
End of Article
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