Reading

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Neural Text to Speech and an AFB AI Survey

The American Foundation for the Blind is researching AI:

In addition to the environmental and ethical violations which LLMs/AIs depend on, the endless hype and inaccurate performance make me shudder and growl. Yet I admit I’ve used neural text-to-speech voices for casual audio reading. The neural voices require an internet connection and they lose intelligibility at speed. They’re best as substitutes for human readers.

Blind computer users set their on-device system text-to-speech (TTS) at high speeds. Three hundred to five hundred words per minute are often cited. For screen reader applications, a robotic voice is a feature, enabling bits to flow from device to brain with minimal interpretation.

Neural voices produce much higher quality than system-level TTS. When fed appropriately coded input, they can laugh, whisper, and sound sarcastic as well as "analyze" an essay to produce a "podcast" dialog between two synthetic discussants. Some samples here: https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/

But I know well the expertise that skilled human narrators bring to their work—whether it’s commercial audiobook production, volunteer alternative-format creation, or podfic elves making magic. I don’t want a world where those jobs are outsourced to computers.

On the gripping hand, I remember when skilled Linotype operators--many Deaf--were obviated by computerized systems where reporters keyed their own copy. I used the bridge technology of phototypesetting, as well as pioneering desktop publishing. It's expected that admin workers now create flyers and graphs and charts.

Have you tried neural voices? Recognized them on YouTube or TikTok or your recent tech support call? Do you have thoughts for or against?

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Oh, this tiny video says so much about working!

Open captions

my brief audio description

Asian man faces camera, sitting at laptop with white earbuds and animated face. Another person's back enters the screen. "This motion" is him pointing to his ear then the laptop and nodding. The picture on his desk is just the words "food" and "healthcare"

Stream: ( right on here )

When you want to view a YouTube short in the classic YouTube screen (with the controls you're familiar with!) you replace the word "shorts" in the link with the word "watch"

I first saw this and the link was youtube.com/shorts/I908J9_u0WE

To use the classic horizontal player go to youtube.com/watch/I908J9_u0WE

Edited due to a strange Markdown bug: when I create a bare link with angle brackets, uppercase letters are transformed into lower case.

<https://youtube.com/watch/i908j9_u0we> becomes https://youtube.com/watch/i908j9_u0we (and the video ID string in the code example are I908J9_u0WE)

but when I create a Markdown link [youtube.com/watch/I908J9_u0WE](https://youtube.com/watch/I908J9_u0WE) the case remains as typed.

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Getting on Disability, USA edition

An acquaintance asked me basic questions about “how to get disability benefits” in the USA. Might as well share it here.

I call myself a “disability doula” because I’ve helped many folks through the process of understanding available services, finding disability community, and accepting a new way of life and identity. Except where noted, I’m happy to answer questions.

Local face-to-face free help

Centers for Independent Living (CILs) have been serving disabled people since the late 1970s.

Find one near you: https://ncil.org/about/find-your-cil-list/

( eight relevant topics )