SMIL text and audio

As I understand it, it is currently a lot easier and more efficient to 
transmit text which is converted to audio than vice versa. The 
deaf-blind, and those of us who are stuck with text-only would probably 
really appreciate this sort of approach to the technology - speech 
recognition is possible, but is also expensive in terms of the hardware 
and software required by an ordinary person. It seems that text will 
always be ahead of it in price, and easier to transmit, with the work of 
conversion to audio done by client-side applications.

The point is that somebody watching a video is likely to have a 
sound-capable system. Somebody reading the text on an embossing printer, 
or small slow computer is more likely not to have access to the sound, 
let alone the additional system requirements to converty it to text.

Charles McCathieNevile
Sunrise Research Laboratory
RMIT University

Received on Thursday, 5 March 1998 06:14:33 UTC