This is to show my classmates in my Rutgers MLIS Digital Library Technologies class about how my employer, Learning Ally, creates audio and audio/text books for people who are blind, visually impaired or have a text-based learning difference.

1. Creating DAISY audio textbooks and
human audio synchronized e-books

2. A little background
Learning Ally is a nonprofit organization, currently
based in Princeton, that is the nation’s largest
library of textbooks and educational material
available in an accessible audio format.
The organization was founded by Anne T.
MacDonald in the late 1940s as Recording for the
Blind to assist GIs blinded during World War II.

3. More background
By the 1990s the organization realized its library could be
used by people with print-based disabilities such as
dyslexia and renamed itself Recording for the Blind &
Dyslexic.
Recognizing a need in the learning disabled community,
the organization renamed itself Learning Ally in 2011.
As well as providing accessible educational material
(not just recordings), it also hopes to become an
advocate and clearing house for individuals with print-
based disabilities and their parents and teachers.

4. Even more background
Through 1996’s Chafee Amendment, Learning
Ally, like the NLS has the ability to produce
copyrighted material in accessible formats for
individuals who are blind, visually impaired, or
have a print disability. People are only granted
access to the library after they have submitted
documentation of need for the material.

5. Where it is…and will be…maybe by the
time I’m done typing this…
As I write this, materials are available only in an
audio format, with ability to navigate by page,
chapter, etc., bookmark, and alter the speed and
pitch of the playback. By the time I’m done typing
this, that may have changed.
Books that synchronize human audio with text and
synthetic audio with text are about to become
available. Studies find that human audio is far
better than synthetic for younger readers who
may be using the books as an intervention to
assist in improving reading skills.

6. Production processes
Since the organization began producing digital
audio books in the late 1990s, the process has
been to take a book, usually supplied by the
publisher, create a pre-coordinated index of
page, chapter, synchronization points. A
volunteer reader narrates the book, syncing
their reading to a navigation point at the
beginning of each page, chapter, etc. as they
narrate. Page number are announced.

7. Yes…this is much of what is recorded

8. What the volunteer sees while recording audio
only. (left) What the member sees while
listening on their app. (right)
Narrator hits the Mark button when they Recording is navigable by page,
want to record the next page or chapter. chapter, etc., by tapping.

9. Coming soon…or
maybe already
by the time you
see this
The narrator will synchronize
each paragraph, as well as each
page and chapter, and…

10. …I couldn’t get a screen shot
of a Learning Ally full
synchronized text book, but
this is pretty much what it will
look like on ReadHear
software, as well as on the
Learning Ally app, pictured
earlier. The human audio will
be synched to the text and will
highlight the paragraph the
narrator is reading. The screen
shot shows something playing
synthetic audio, which is much
easier to sync at a more
granular level. LA is
developing new recording
software which will make it
easier to sync human audio at
a more granular level.

11. How do the words get on the screen?
For the full text books, hard copies are unbound,
scanned, turned into PDFs, and sent overseas
to be converted by OCR to XML. Navigation
points are added to the XML at the beginnings
of paragraphs, pages, chapters, etc. When
considering that many of the books that LA
records include tables, figures, visuals, etc.,
and the limitations of OCR (foreign characters,
math symbols, etc.), this can be a VERY labor
intensive process.

12. In case you’re thinking, “shouldn’t this
be easier…”
Learning Ally adheres to international DAISY
consortium guidelines for creating digital
talking books. If you want to see a more than
capable programmer pull out her hair, have
her try to write DAISY-compliant code for 14
year old recording software. (Hence, the
development of a new recording platform that
allows the creation of more complex DAISY-
compliant books. Got $100,000+ of grant
money for development of such a tool?)

13. In case you don’t think there’s
competition between nonprofits…
There is a Palo Alto, CA-based organization
called Bookshare. It’s volunteers scan books
which are then readable by ReadHear or by a
computer’s text-to-speech reader. It’s faster
(and probably cheaper) to produce, but all
synthetic audio. The Dept. of Education pits
the organizations against one another for
federal funding.