WBU Technology Working Group General Assembly
Return to Blindness and Visual Impairment
Date: 23/07/2008
Venue: Geneva
Article
In April 2007 I was commissioned by the DAISY Board and the WBU Technology Committee to explore the user requirements for the next generation of talking books. After conducting detailed consultations in seven countries - Australia, Canada, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the United Kingdom - and attending two regional meetings in Africa, I compiled an Interim Report. I had contacted the complete DAISY mailing list and used other mailing lists to reach as many organisations as possible but received a very poor response from Europe, no response from Latin America and a decision not to respond from the USA.
The Interim Report contained five major findings:
- The VI sector is deeply committed to the concept of user centred design but does not have the infrastructure to call upon a properly weighted sample of users in order to make the user centred concept real; in only one country was I able to hold discussions with anything like a representative sample. In most cases I was referred to technophiles and policy makers whose varying opinions had led to the need to consult users to assemble a user requirement.
- There was an assumption in all countries that VIPs needed special, simple equipment to access talking books but this was not supported by research findings. There was no research on the way in which VIPs access consumer electronics such as televisions and CD players. From what I could gather, users had been 'conditioned' into a dependency syndrome whereby they could operate their television remote controllers perfectly well but thought they needed specially simplified equipment for talking books. This assumption typified the sector's tendency to believe its own rhetoric.
- In spite of the call for specially simplified players there was a widespread call for DAISY books to be used on standard, commercial players. It was not clear to me whether the call for special players, primarily by organisations of and for blind people rather than users, was to satisfy a user requirement or to preserve a closed system to protect publishers. I was unable to unpick this tangle of issues.
- There was a widespread call for special players to have the capacity to play commercial products and access broadcasting.
- The structure of most organisations of and for blind people dictates the kind of content to which people have access; thus, many services that were book-based did not offer other material. There was a widespread call for newspaper access.
I should also add the following:
- Many developing countries were prepared to accept synthetic speech rather than real audio if this decreased the cost and increased the availability of audio text. They were also in favour of investigating the role that broadcasting might play in making educational material available.
- One interesting feature of the discussions was that there were no references to the use of television for carrying audio material. The importance of television is that in many countries there are facilities for using PIN numbers for accessing entertainment on demand and this might satisfy the publishers' requirement for protection.
- To demonstrate the complexity of the issue, the call for a simplified user interface for older people, justifying a special, closed system player, was supplemented by the assertion that VI students required a special player to provide the navigational complexity they required. The two major conclusions I reached with respect to students were:
- First, most want a computer and/or a cheap media player but do not want a special player in addition to these two pieces of standard equipment; they want to read DAISY books on both of these pieces of equipment;
- Students do not want complexity; they find available systems such as screen reader technology far too difficult.
In writing the final report I took the 34 tables in the Interim Report and divided users into four demographic groups, the first three possibly requiring a special player:
- Very old people almost exclusively reading fiction or light non-fiction books;
- Adults reading fiction and light non fiction and some 'lifestyle' material;
- Children and students;
- People only requiring mainstream access.
The requirements for the first group, the elderly people who largely only read fiction and light non fiction, were that they should have a special player:
- With very simple controls;
- With a ‘home' key to allow them to get out of tangles and start again;
- At a cost of no more than £50.
I think it is important to make two observations on this simple set of requirements:
- First, as I have already noted, there is no research to support the need for a specially simplified player. As I have noted, the people calling for such a player told me that they had no problem with their televisions, CD players and mobile phones;
- Secondly, it is not clear that most of these people want a ‘library' model rather than a ‘broadcasting' model. Many people I interviewed wanted a book for company but they were not all that bothered what kind of book they had as long as it fitted a genre requirement for, say, romance or crime fiction. Many might simply want to tune to a special spoken word radio channel, eliminating the need for any player. There is an extent to which the analogue history of technology has influenced development and that the arrival of digital has not affected the analogue way of thinking.
Adults reading fiction, light non fiction and some lifestyle material say that they want:
- Multiple format output, including real audio, synthetic speech, modified print and braille, either using a special player or software loaded into commercial equipment;
- But any special player must play commercial products;
- Material should be available any time, anywhere;
- Any system should default to the simplest array of choices but enable customisation to offer a richer array of features.
There are two qualifying observations:
- First, although the sample I interviewed was not statistically significant, it showed a marked preference for using commercial products with DAISY software rather than using a special player. There were a number of important factors here, including a reluctance to be identified as ‘special' or ‘blind' and a wish to ‘have what everybody else has'.
Children and students had very simple needs:
- No special players as they all want computers and media players;
- ‘Trendy' kit for light and mobile reading.
The urge among this group to be ‘normal' was even stronger than it was among adults of working age. In spite of the assertion of educators and policy makers, the children and students I interviewed said that they spent far too much time learning complex systems and wanted something easy. It was not uncommon to be told that operating a screen reader effectively was more difficult than the actual course work for which it was being used! I particularly remember the girls in India who said they wanted pink media players to slip in their handbags!
Although the bias towards the use of standard commercial solutions was towards developing countries, there was a general call for the barrier between closed and open systems to be broken down.
Here, in summary, are the general findings:
- There is a growing amount of commercial audio and an increasing variety of media players; it is important to make commercial media players and mobile phones accessible;
- It should be possible to access audio material on phones and media players.
As noted, there was a call from developing countries for linear broadcasting but the use of television was not mentioned.
Since the Consultative Report was submitted to the WBU Technology Committee and DAISY Board in January this year, my thoughts have crystallised and I would now summarise my position as follows:
- First, if we are to have special players at all, they need to be justified by an evidence-based user requirement;
- Producing special players to protect publishers is not justified unless the publishers can produce evidence of text piracy by VIPs;
- The traditional book-based library model needs to be modified to include all digital information;
- The convergence of technologies means that there need not be a choice between a ‘library' and a ‘broadcasting' model.