Why not send it to somewhere like fredshead? It's the aphb blog; I don't
have the url off the top of my head, but a google search should find it.
Tasha Raella Chemel wrote:
hi list, A few weeks ago, i asked if anyone knew of a portable player
that uses eloquence. I was bored a couple of days ago, so decided to
write a post (that i already put on lj) to see whether anyone else
cares as much about this issue as much as I do (doubtful) and to see
if anyone wants to help me write to APH or Humanware (even more
doubtful). Anyway, for your enjoyment (or lack thereof) here it is. if
anyone could suggest a good home for this piece, I'd be very appreciative.
Up until relatively recently, whenever a new jaws update was about to
be released, I would frantically read the "what's new" webpage with
only one desired
feature in mind. I wasn't interested in remote access or the newest
scripts for Sound Forge or Cakewalk; all I ever wanted from
screenreader developers
was the edition of an alternative software synthesizer to replace
crummy old Eloquence. Each time a new release was issued, with no
comments on Eloquence
to speak of, I would face my disappointment yet again. After spending
hours and hours trying to make Jaws embrace the beauty of RealSpeak, I
discovered
that the coupling worked on principle, but JAWS’s and Jennifer’s union
was fraught with strange pronunciations, misplaced emphases, and poor
responsiveness.
As I grew older, my opinion of Eloquence began to soften. The more I
read, the better I became at imbuing that once-hated voice with all of
the emotions,
idiosyncratic quirks and vocal qualities of a professional audiobook
narrator. It was almost as if my ear was so accustomed to Eloquence's
cadences that
I was able to completely tune out the voice itself and impose my own
patterns onto it, much like a sighted person reading silently is able
to hear character's
voices in her head. In fact, the results of the survey I conducted in
April of this year gives preliminary support to this theory, since
blind and sighted
users had utilized very different cues when making emotion judgments
about sentences generated by Eloquence. Needless to say, if you were
unfortunate enough
to take said survey, you no doubt recall that it was long and tedious;
the analysis of the data it produced was even more so. But all of the
countless
hours I spent GENERATING PROSODIC TRANSCRIPTIONS FOR EACH UTTERANCE
AND PAINSTAKINGLY CODING AND SCORING EACH RESPONSE ONLY DEEPENED MY
COMMITMENT TO MY
SILICATE COMPANION. To my mortification, it was a running joke in my
co-ed fraternity that I had developed somewhat of a crush on JAWS.
Even the new RealSpeak voices, which shipped with Jaws 8.0, were
thrust aside in favor of good old Eloquence.
Not surprisingly, my affectionate feelings towards my favorite
synthesizer prompted me to find new opportunities for us to spend time
in each other's company. Wouldn't
it be lovely, I thought one day, if I could listen to text or word
documents on a portable player with Eloquence speech? That way, my
dear friend could
comfort me when the arduous demands of the treadmill proved to be too
taxing, and could share in my enjoyment of a balmy day on the beach.
My search, however,
was fruitless. No portable device capable of playing text files and
costing less than $1,000 uses Eloquence as a synthesizer. The
Bookport, which
I eventually bought out of desperation, uses Doubletalk, whose mumbled
burblings are positively grating. My only option seemed to be creating
MP3 files
of my beloved’s voice with a program like TextAloud and then
transferring them to my portable player. Since this process takes
about twenty minutes per
book, it is not the best solution for a college student known for her
laziness, impatience and lack of forethought.
At the end of June, when I learned that Humanware had released the
Victor Reader Stream, my excitement bloomed anew. Though the device
did not use Eloquence,
it promised high-quality speech developed by nuance, Eloquence’s
current owner. My happiness proved to be short-lived, however, when I
heard a sample of
the speech used on the stream. Which brings me to the purpose of this
post.
I am well aware that one’s feelings about a speech synthesizer are
completely subjective, and differ widely from person to person.
However, I nonetheless
believe that Eloquence is still highly regarded among blind computer
users for the simple reason that the leading screenreaders and
scanning packages still
continue to use it. Eloquence, for all its faults, is familiar. Unless
there is some technical obstacle of which I am unaware, I think the
companies who
design portable bookreaders are simply underestimating the appeal of
this familiarity. In my opinion, portable bookreaders would
drastically increase in
popularity if they used a speech synthesizer to which most of us are
already accustomed. If we can’t use JAWS while we’re at the gym, we
should at least
be able to hear texts read to us in our screenereader’s voice.
I am very curious to see whether other blind computer users share my
opinion. If I get enough positive interest, I am planning to write a
letter to HumanWare
or APH. Anyone who wants to help me with this is more than welcome to
contact me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, or to
circulate this posting.
Thanks,
Tasha
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