Generation X

[Karoline]

Hi
I have been looking at this book with MS word and NVDA. I can't get it to read all no matter what I do. I am not sure if the pages are assigned by word or included in the text. I like the book so far. I'll take a look at it with JAWS and some other programs and report back. I am glad others have tested it with Voice Dream. Iwill not do this.. BTW, I downloaded the E-Text format.

[jennlortie]

Hi everyone,

Thank you for all your feedback so far!

One thing I was wondering about for this book is use of footnotes and how easy it is to navigate through to the footnotes? Would it have been better in the e-text version to use end notes? Does it depend on the TTS software?

I am also wondering about the Emphasis style. We have since stopped using it to produce books, but I'm wondering if it adds much to the reading experience to keep the Emphasis style or if it creates more "issues" than it's worth? Again, does this depend on the TTS software?

Jenn

[farrah]

Hi
I have been looking at this book with MS word and NVDA. I can't get it to read all no matter what I do. I am not sure if the pages are assigned by word or included in the text. I like the book so far. I'll take a look at it with JAWS and some other programs and report back. I am glad others have tested it with Voice Dream. Iwill not do this.. BTW, I downloaded the E-Text format.

Hi Karoline - I'm just wondering if the Word version is readable using other software? Did you manage to get it to work with NVDA?
Also, the book doesn't have any manual page breaks inserted, but there is a heading structure for navigation.

[Karoline]

Hi

JAWS 18 reads continiously, but for a few pages at a time. I am still not sure why. I just ran it with Kurtzwell 1000 and it reads just fine. BTW, Converting it to KES did not change any formatting. It looks the same. I need to do a little digging to figure out what the matter is with NVDA and read all. Thoughts?

[ka.li]

I've just tried reading the book with NVDA and it works fine here.

What version of NVDA and Word are you using? I'm running the latest NVDA Master snapshot with Word 2016.

[Karoline]

Latest NVDA, but MS word 2010. This could be the problem.

[Daniella.LP]

I have explored this with my Victor Stream and in the Read2Go app.

In the Victor Stream headings work very wel. Other navigation options in the Stream are phrase and in one or five minute increments (and that time appears to be adjusted to the reading speed I choose). I appreciate the footnotes/descriptions.

One thing that would improve the reading experience is to include more options for navigating the book (paragraph, page). I understand the challenge for production if publisher books do not include these, and that adding some type of extra marker requires extra work when producing the DAISY formats.

Using the Read2Go app on my iPhone, I found a slight difference between the DAISY2 and DAISY3 versions (not when playing the book, but related to Voiceover.
In the DAISY2 version, when I move my finger on the screen, VoiceOver reads whatever text is there fine, but when it stops, Voiceover says "link", as if the whole phrase or line is a link. This is not the case with the DAISY3 version; Voiceover reads the text but does not indicate that it is a link.

Playback works great. I can move to the previous and next sections (headings), but notice a slight difference:

When I move to the next section, the app starts reading the title of that section; but in the case of the previous section, the app appears to read one or two sentences just before the header of the section. This is not a big deal, but I thought I would mention it in any case.

[farrah]

Hi all, thanks for your feedback so far. It's really interesting to see how the files perform differently on different software.

Question about pagination - would it be useful to have pagination in the DAISY files even if it did not correspond with the original print book pagination? We could easily insert pagination, but it would be different from the pagination of the original book.

According to the EPUB specification, pagination is specifically for use in mixed print-digital environments to coordinate their positions. For example, a student using a digital edition in a class where her peers are using print books would be able to jump to the same pages during instruction. My worry is that if we insert our own pagination, it might be confusing for users that are reading the books in the context of a book club or classroom.

[Daniella.LP]

In JAWS, the read all command does not read footnotes automatically. So for continuous reading in Word, it would not make much difference to have footnotes or endnotes. It would make a difference if people scroll up or down a page with the arrow keys to move line by line, because at some point the footnote pane will appear.

Regarding emphasis, unless I check for font attributes, I cannot know if something is in bold or italic (I think it is possible to set the screen reader to use different voices to indicate different text attributes). For reading books in the Victor Stream or with other apps, the only way might be to include a note to indicate that the following text has been emphasized, with a note at the end of that chunk of text. For academic reading this is more relevant, but for leisure reading I don't think it is a problem.

I notice that when I scroll down the Etext file and reach the end of the page, if I press the down arrow I skip one page; if I press the right arrow, however, I move to the immediate next page as normal. I think this has to do with the view mode; if I press the Word commands "alt+w followed by the number 1" it corrects the issue.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for all your feedback so far!

One thing I was wondering about for this book is use of footnotes and how easy it is to navigate through to the footnotes? Would it have been better in the e-text version to use end notes? Does it depend on the TTS software?

I am also wondering about the Emphasis style. We have since stopped using it to produce books, but I'm wondering if it adds much to the reading experience to keep the Emphasis style or if it creates more "issues" than it's worth? Again, does this depend on the TTS software?

Jenn

[Daniella.LP]

I agree that inserting a different pagination from the original book may become confusing. One possibility would be to include a note at the beginning of the book explaining that pagination in this book does not correspond to the original, and that it was added for navigation purposes, etc. But if a reader skips that part of the notice, then they would not know and would still result in confusion.

Would it be possible to insert a paragraph marker to provide more options for navigation (in the Victor Stream for example?)

Hi all, thanks for your feedback so far. It's really interesting to see how the files perform differently on different software.

Question about pagination - would it be useful to have pagination in the DAISY files even if it did not correspond with the original print book pagination? We could easily insert pagination, but it would be different from the pagination of the original book.

According to the EPUB specification, pagination is specifically for use in mixed print-digital environments to coordinate their positions. For example, a student using a digital edition in a class where her peers are using print books would be able to jump to the same pages during instruction. My worry is that if we insert our own pagination, it might be confusing for users that are reading the books in the context of a book club or classroom.