Wednesday, March 5, 2003

SeniorMag.com: Now... The Internet SPEAKS

SeniorMag, LLC and Fonix, Inc., have joined forces to enable readers to actually "hear" online articles. SeniorMag is the first online magazine to supply the means for a vision and reading impaired audience to access content by providing a viable voice alternative to reading the text. The only user requirements are that you have Internet access, a computer with sound, and that you know how to push a button.

Seniors are particularly vulnerable to certain age-related vision problems and often have other reading difficulties that make it difficult to access information online. According to the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey, 92 million Americans have difficulty reading. Another 8.7 million people have low vision problems and many of these are seniors.

According to SeniorMag President Steve Hardman, "While this number is startling, we expect to see that the number will only grow as baby-boomers age. This technology is going to have to be deployed and further enhanced to continue to make the Internet into a viable place for many seniors."

Seniors have additional problems reading content online. As eyes age, theyare less able to focus. Bright colors, lack of the developer's attention tocontrast, and the light that is emitted from the screen make it hard toconcentrate for a long period of time. Senior eyes quickly become tired.SeniorMag addressed most of these problems from the start through itsadoption of color schemes, contrast patterns, and general layout. Yet the staff at SeniorMag knew that addressing such needs was only the beginning. Millions more Americans could be enabled through an adoption of a viable text-to-speech function.

Though text-to-speech technology isn't exactly brand new, it is new to the Internet. In the past, such technology was relatively awkward. It required the user to purchase and load programs on his/her own computer and then copy the text into another application in order to hear it. Such programs required a great deal of disc space, could be expensive, and downloading the program over dial-up modems could take days. Even if someone went through all the work, there were still problems when uncommon words were encountered. The result in such cases was gibberish.

SeniorMag chose SpeakThis technology from Fonix which bypasses all previous problems found in other deployments. On SeniorMag.com, the user navigates to the page where the title is large and bold. Pressing the SpeakThis button starts an immediate translation of the text found on that page into an MP3 file and it automatically finds the user's MP3 player. Almost every home computer has such a player built right in. Depending upon the length of the text and the modem speed, the MP3 player will start reading the text within seconds.

"Because we have control over the text-to-speech translation," emphasized Hardman, "we know which words will be used and can train SpeakThis to correctly pronounce the words."

The user can continue to let it play or review any portion of the recording just as you would with a tape player. Other options include the ability to download the file and save it to disc, or even email it to a friend. The most amazing part of it is there are no downloads, and any user can begin using it immediately without incurring any costs.

"Online text-to-speech is in its infancy right now and has a long way to go," said Hardman. "But we believe that this technology is one of the most useful ones because while it's definitely on the leading edge, it addresses the real needs of real people."

More information can be found at www.SeniorMag.com.

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