[ntnm] Re: Publications delivery and quality feedback

  • From: Isaac Porat <isaac@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: ntnm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 08 May 2014 08:36:40 +0100

Hi Ari

I developed SpeakOn which provided among many other things the facilities to browse, add to favourites download and read TNAUK publications it is still going strong although for laziness I did not promote it in recent years. I have done already some work to make it work with the new NTNM formats and will report on this in a separate email. I developed SpeechHub which is used as an add-on by plenty of NVDA users but did not developed NVDA itself.

I am aware that the newspapers are made to appear as a sighted user would see them but in my opinion and many I spoke to it is of little use for a blind person as it is hard work to read as each article needs to be read sequentially (at least its title) before one can get to the article (or group of articles by subject) the user wants. Thus effectively the newspaper appears as if the articles are randomly distributed - just my view.

Regards
Isaac


On 08/05/2014 08:07, Ari Damoulakis wrote:
Hi Isaac
As I remember, you're one of the brains who actually developed the old
software and doc? Well done, I just loved it!
Just one thing, you say the daily newspapers are a bit mixed up, as if
the articles are random. What I think they're doing is rather putting
the file together based on page numbers. Like you I did prefer the way
it was by section.

On 5/8/14, Isaac Porat <isaac@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello

The following summarise my experience with the new RNIB NTNM service.

1.  I find that the website works well.  The nature of a web based
delivery is that the user needs to go through a number of stages, four
in the current system to get where he wants which takes a bit of time
but for me it is not a big deal.

2. I find the lack of date stamp in the newspaper file name a nuisance
which needs fixing sooner rather than later.

3. While the old TNAUK propriety '.doc' format did the job (including
page numbers for those who wanted this information) the emphasis on
international standards such as HTML and epub is welcome.

4. The magazines produced with manual extraction / intervention such as
The New Scientist and BBC Focus are well structured and consequently a
pleasure to navigate and read.

4. I find the output of the publications produced by the automatic NLA
extraction system disappointing.
These include all the daily, regional and some of the magazines such the
Economist.
The section found such as News and Features, repeating themselves makes
to me little sense; the organization of these publications is
unfortunately only marginally better than having the articles
distributed randomly. To my mind producing these publications based on
sections which are easy to navigate and read should be a top priority.

6.  One of my main interest was the Financial Times newspaper. While it
is missing from the NLA feed, the feed from the publisher is very good
and with such important newspaper it is worth the 3,4 days of competent
programmers time required to incorporate it into your system.

Thanks
Isaac








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