[blind-democracy] FW: After You DB82661

  • From: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 18:51:58 -0500

Below is an email that I sent to NLS today. I thought some of you might be
interested in what I told them. I received a response, thanking me and
telling me that it would be forwarded on to the appropriate staff members.
There is a member of the Bard talk list whose name I can't remember, who
works for NLS and who emailed me privately a few years ago when I began
asking about the changes of volume in the new books. He told me that when
they were designing the NLS digital player, he suggested an additional
control which would compensate for the differences in volume that occur in
digital books. But his superiors said that an additional control on the
machine would be confusing to people. I assume they meant to the elderly.
This is unfortunate because we're the folks who need it.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni [mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 12:55 PM
To: 'NLSDownload'
Subject: After You DB82661

I'm writing about this book, but I am also writing about a broader issue.
I'm not sure that you are the right people for me to communicate with, about
the broader issue. But if not, perhaps you can direct my comments to the
appropriate person.

About this book which is commercially produced. Now that I'm old, I've
developed hearing issues along with barely being able to see. The NLS player
is wonderful, in that one can use the controls to adjust each individual
book so that it can be more easily heard. But there is no way of dealing
with the changes of volume within the narration of a book. This particular
book is especially difficult to hear. The narrator has a British accent and
she does the main narration of the book in a very soft, confidential tone,
difficult to hear. She speaks more loudly for the characters, but this also
varies. I did speak with a sighted person whose hearing is fine, who
listened to the same commercial version as NLS has, and she told me that she
found the volume hanges in the book excessive. For me, the recording was so
difficult to hear, that I had to get the Bookshare version of the book so
that I could read without missing anything. That was really disappointing
because I much prefer to hear human narration. I've done this only twice in
the past and it was with books that I'd gotten directly from Audible. I've
never had to do this with an NLS book before. And actually, I've stopped
getting books from Audible because the recording quality is so
unpredictable.

I think there is a broader issue here. If I'm not mistaken, the majority of
legally blind people in the US are newly blinded elderly people. I think
it's safe to assume that a good percentage of them have impaired hearing. My
evidence is that within the past few years, (I'm now 78 hears old), I keep
receiving advertisements for hearing aids in the mail. So if a lot of these
elderly blind people begin to use the NLS talking book program and if the
talking book program uses more and more commercially produced books without
making some kind of technical fix to make it easier to hear the books, there
are a lot of folks who won't benefit from the program, and that would be
terrible. I'm told that these severe changes in volume level are related to
the fact that the books are digitally recorded. Even within the NLS program,
there's a big difference between the books recorded by NLS narrators in the
90's and books recorded now. Books recrded by the same narrator in the 90's
are easier to hear than the ones she records now. And I notice differences
in the sound quality of NLS produced books that come from different studios.
However, there seems to be much more unpredictability with the commercial
books. I know that most of the younger blind folks on email lists, love the
commercial books and they also like all of the performing rather than just
good, expressive reading. Even when my hearing was fine, I never liked all
of what I consider to be, overacting. But I do think that if you are wanting
to serve those of us who are old, it would be helpful to try to come up with
a solution. Not all of us use hearing aids, nor do I think that hearing aids
would help in these situations, especially for those of us who listen to a
book while falling asleep at night. I also do appreciate how much more
efficient it is to use commercial books that are already produced. You can
get them more quickly and it may be less expensive. So I hope that either a
change can be made in our NLS players, or that you can do something with the
recordings when you convert them into daisy format to even out the changes
in volume.

Miriam Vieni


Other related posts: