FYI: Announcing the ebook augmentation system

The following announcement may be of interest to this group. Also,
Willem may be a developer we might want to invite into our proceedings.


Willem van der Walt writes:
> Good day,
> Please feel free to redistribute to individuals or organizations you think
> might be interested.
> My appologies if this is somewhat off topic for this list.
> Kind regards, Willem
> 
> ???Announcing the ebook augmentation system
> ========================================
> 
> Introduction
> ------------
> The Voice Computing Research Group at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa has developed a system
>  which automates the addition of either human-narrated or synthesized speech to a standard EPUB 3 publication.
> The system automates the alignment of the speech to the text of the book at paragraph, sentence and word level, allowing the
> eventual user to switch among these levels of granularity on the fly.
> 
> In short, the user of the system pushes in the standard EPUB 3 and, optionally, the pre-existing human-narrated audio files to
> get out an EPUB 3 with the synchronized audio included.
> When no human-narrated audio is available, the text of the book is synthesized, and the synthesized audio is added instead.
> The system also allows for a combination of human-narrated and synthesized audio.
> It is operated through a user-friendly web-based interface.
> 
> Multilingual support
> --------------------
> As the definition of the main language of standard EPUB 3 files is often incorrectly specified in practice,
> the user selects the main language before the processing starts. When passages in one or more foreign languages exist in the
> book, these must be marked up in the input EPUB 3 file with the xml:lang tag.
> This is required to ensure proper alignment of the audio with the text and, in the case where speech has to be synthesized,
> to enable the automatic selection of a TTS voice in the correct language.
> 
> By default, the Qfrency Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesizer (also developed by the same research group) is used, with fallback
> to the open-source Espeak synthesizer when a language not supported by Qfrency TTS is encountered.
> With some customization, it is possible to use other TTS engines as well. As a working example of this, the open-source RHVoice
>  TTS engine was implemented.
> 
> Input and output formats
> ------------------------
> Once a book is augmented with audio, the following output formats are available for download:
> 1. An EPUB 3 file with the audio added and synchronized to the text.
> 2. In the case of synthesized audio, a ZIP file containing a set of MP3 files with just the audio.
> 3. A ZIP file containing a portable embosser format (PEF) file for Braille production.
> This is obtained by running the DAISY Pipeline2 product in the background.
> 4. A ZIP file, also produced by the Pipeline2 product, with a DAISY 2.02 version of the book.
> At the time of writing, the latter still has some issues which will hopefully be resolved soon.
> 
> As a convenience to the user, a simple web-based interface is provided for conversion of other input formats into EPUB 3.
> Currently, DOCX and PDF can be converted.
> 
> Reading the resulting EPUB 3 books
> ----------------------------------
> The books can be read using any EPUB 3 reader that supports media overlays. With the exception of Readium, most of the ones
> available, however, do not support the on-the-fly changing of granularity. We have an EPUB 3 reader which is in beta.
> It supports the multi-level granularity (paragraph, sentence and word) and has some additional features like search, repeat
> etc. It currently runs on Android and Windows, with iOS in the pipeline.
> 
> Invitation to pilot the system
> ------------------------------
> We want to extend an invitation to interested providers of accessible reading material and publishers world-wide, to contact us
>  to participate in piloting the system.
> 
> Each participating organization will receive one or more accounts on the system through which it will be able to upload its
> books for augmentation securely. The books uploaded and processed by each account are only visible to that account holder.
> During the pilot phase, the system will run on our servers with the aforementioned TTS engines as options. Other implementation
>  options will be available when the system goes into production. Our EPUB 3 reader will also be provided to the participants.
> 
> To participate in the pilot, please email a request to: Ilana Wilken <iwilken@csir.co.za> with the subject:
> "Ebook augmentation system: international pilot". In the body of the email, please provide the names and email addresses of
> the individuals in the organization who will require accounts. Optionally, indicate the language(s) which you would
> like to process with the system. For technical enquiries about the system itself, please send an email to:
> Willem van der Walt <wvdwalt@csir.co.za>.
> 
> We would like to achieve the following objectives through the pilot:
> 1. More real-world books through the system, with feedback from real-world users on both the system and on the resulting
> output books.
> 2. Suggestions on the prefered business model, e.g. a once-off license or annual subscription license, maintenance and support,
>  etc.
> 3. Whether you would prefer to run the system externally over the internet through a web interface (like in the pilot) or
> internally on your own servers.
> 4. Feedback on the usability of our EPUB 3 reader.
> 5. Any other suggestions or comments that you think are relevant.
> 
> Conclusion
> ----------
> EPUB 3 with media overlays has a lot of potential, in particular in the education setting. Producing such books, however, is a
> complex process. We believe that our system reduces this complexity to a level where many more organizations will find it
> feasible to produce such books. Therefore, we hope for a positive response from the community.
> 
> 
> 
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to technical-developments as: janina@rednote.net.
> To unsubscribe click here: http://cts.dundee.net/u?id=96295955.a9b72dc2d2019677a8bcc5371dd31c3a&n=T&l=technical-developments&o=6107866
> or send a blank email to leave-6107866-96295955.a9b72dc2d2019677a8bcc5371dd31c3a@mail.daisy.org

-- 

Janina Sajka
https://linkedin.com/in/jsajka

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Co-Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures	http://www.w3.org/wai/apa

Received on Wednesday, 5 May 2021 12:33:31 UTC