[sugar] [OLPC India] xbook : pdf viewer in $100 laptop

[Peter Korn]

Hi Ka-Ping,
> On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Don Hopkins wrote:
>   
>> I agree, it would be great to have a voice synthesizer read the text out
>> loud!
>>     
>
> I think it would be even better to empower the users of these laptops
> to make their own audiobooks.  Add recording and sharing functionality
> to the e-book reader (and to the writing activity, so they can create
> and share their own personal stories); leverage their enthusiasm,
> their creativity, their numbers, and their sense of personal ownership.
> When parents and older kids take pride in creating content that will
> help younger kids learn to read, everybody benefits.
>
> My parents read to me when I was little; let them read to each other,
> not only read at by a distant stranger (or a speech synthesis algorithm).

The DAISY consortium has defined a digital audio book standard, and 
there is an effort to make an open source ODF to DAISY converter, 
complete with text-to-speech generation.  A DAISY book (see 
http://daisy.org) is an XML file containing book structure, and maybe 
audio and maybe full text (and sometimes both).  DAISY books would be an 
excellent way to deliver content, with either human or very high quality 
synthetic speech.  A DAISY book reader that had the full text could 
highlight words as they are spoken in audio, aiding reading 
comprehension.  By the way, NIMAS is a derivative of DAISY, and is the 
emerging digital textbook standard.


Regards,

Peter Korn
Accessibility Architect,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.