Jim—no last name given—wrote this comment in agreement with Senescence, death and e-books: Could an e-library help?, Alex Sanchez’s moving essay that we published earlier today. – D.R.
By Jim
I myself am a stage 4C cancer patient, and I spent six weeks of my life in daily radiation therapy. Everyday while waiting for treatment, I suffered through boredom reading ancient magazines that people had dropped off. It really would have been nice to have e-book readers available for use. In fact, that is where I saw and touched my first Kindle, in use by a caregiver of a fellow patient who would spend an hour or more a day in the waiting room. Recently I purchased my own Kindle just for cases such as this. The interminable waits for the perpetually late doctors don’t seem as bad with my Kindle. And my days on disability are that much less boring now that I’m out of the workforce for the first time in my life.
I agree that blocking text-to-speech does a great disservice to those with late-stage illness. If I were too weak to hold up my Kindle, it would be great to be still challenged intellectually by a good book without troubling my caregivers to read to me for hours on end and would spare the much higher expense of purchasing audio books that would serve their purpose for a limited time.
Image credit: CC licensed image, from ranran.
I am honored to hear from someone as brave as Jim. Our society should do more to help those of us facing tough times. Over the years I have been easily angered by people who put their own objectives over the general well being of others. I am not climbing up on the proverbial soap box and calling for radical social changes but merely saying that there are things that we all can do. Often times simply bringing a issue to the forefront can spur action. Because today it may be the neighbor’s house thats burning but tommorow it may be our very own.
Speaking as a patient of MD Anderson Cancer Ctr in Houston I totally agree with the text to speech option for kindle. For my wife, a Breast Cancer Patient, the ability to listen to a favorite book while hooked up to the chemo tree would be outstanding…
That Jim that commented on Alex Sanchez’s essay was me. I did not include my last name in my post as I prefer the anonymity that the Internet affords, especially as it relates to private health information. And I’m glad that Alex and Jim Mackrell agree with me. The Kindle has been the best $259 that I’ve spent in a long time.
Thank you Jim for your guest post. It is very moving, and at the same time, you make an excellent case for Text-to-Speech technology. I use the Sony Reader Pocket Edition myself, so I can understand how the Kindle can give you a lot of joy, entertainment and intellectual stimulation as you fight your disease.
I hope those publishers who are against TTS functionality on the Kindle read this post.
Instead of waiting for Amazon to implement Text-to-Speech, do it yourself!
I use TextAloud, a fantastic program that lets you convert any text on your computer into speech. Now my computer can READ ALOUD all my ebooks, websites, and documents (like Word and PDF) to me! I can turn any of my ebooks into MP3 audiobooks. The exception to this is DRM-protected ebooks, but I have figured out a way around that. You need to strip their DRM protection first.
http://www.nextup.com/
TextAloud also can convert text into MP3 files that you can put onto an iPod or MP3 player, so you can listen to books/documents in your bed/car/gym/train!
Since basic computer voices are horribly robotic, I installed 3 AT&T Natural Voices, which take up about 500 MB each, but give you more naturally sounding voices.
The best AT&T voices are Mike, Crystal, and Audrey (all 16 kHz). The best basic voice is Anna. Another good voice is Emily (by ScanSoft). Different companies sell voices that read aloud in up to 21 languages (Chinese, French, Spanish, German, etc)! Test the AT&T voices yourself on this “text-to-speech” demo site:
http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
Please tell your ebook friends about TextAloud! No need to wait for the Text-to-Speech feature on the Kindle. Convert your ebooks on your PC and put them on an MP3 player.
I use TextAloud, a fantastic program that lets you convert any text on your computer into speech. Now my computer can READ ALOUD all my ebooks, websites, and documents (like Word and PDF) to me! I can turn any of my ebooks into MP3 audiobooks. The exception to this is DRM-protected ebooks, but I have figured out a way around that. You need to strip their DRM protection first.
Get TextAloud here:
http://www.nextup.com/
TextAloud also can convert text into MP3 files that you can put onto an iPod or MP3 player, so you can listen to books/documents in your bed/car/gym/train!