Two opposite demands need to be balanced, cost versus end user needs. The original print was marked up by chapter or section of some kind, by page, by paragraph, by sentence, by word. The print enabled eye can dwell, read sequentially, skip forwards and backwards. And then there are different fonts and graphics that break up the print and support non-sequential reading. The audio is linear. The challenge is to break up the audio, preferably in line with the print, at minimum cost.

There is a need to give the end user the best possible experience. I understand that the Royal National Institute of Blind People in the United Kingdom, when it began its digitizing project in 2000, broke their DAISY titles every two hours, which happened to be their track length at that time. Because their borrowers have since been exposed to properly marked up DAISY they are having to go back to earlier titles and add in markup. I do not know how many titles they have revisited, but they have had to respond to user demand.

I would recommend that you don't underestimate your users' needs. In my experience (more than 35 years as a librarian, audio and braille producer, and almost 60 years of life as a totally blind person), I have observed users have far higher expectations of narrator quality than 30 years ago and that most users know why print page numbers have a relevance.

I have read that there are DAISY tools that will add markup at each pause in narration. The length of pause that would trigger a marker can be preset. Most narrators pause between chapters. I would not suggest the best pause length for a marker to be inserted as I have not played with this. There are far better minds than mine in the DAISY production arena so someone has real experience of the pause length that would bring best results. I would recommend that you mark up at least to chapter level. Even if you automate this and do not get it right every time, some markup is better than none, in my experience.

One person has said that synchronization of text with audio should be reserved only for reference works. I disagree. There is an often used phrase "recreational reading" or "leisure reading" which, to my ears, dumbs down the end reader.

When I listened to the "leisure" novel The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini I was frustrated that I did not have a parallel text to learn the spelling of so very many words that were unfamiliar to me. Had there been synchronized text, as a braille user, I could have checked the words on my braille display as the excellent narration cruised along. A non braille user could similarly have checked unfamiliar words in the parallel text with speech. I conceed that this improvement to the reading experience may only ever occur with new recordings. Sadly, it seems that few producers routinely match text with audio for their new works, even though it adds very little time to the production process.

Mary


