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Assistive Media

Aired November 13 and 14, 1999

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This is Internet On The Air. I'm Joan Silvi. Heard any good magazines lately? Details in a moment.

Funding Credit: Internet On The Air is a production of the University of Michigan School of Information and Michigan radio, made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Books on tape, books on CD - you can check them out of the library or buy them from the book store. You can even rent them at your local video store. But where can you listen to shorter literary works? A few years ago, the answer would have been 'nowhere'. Now you can find audio versions of magazine articles on the World Wide Web.

In 1996, David Erdody started a non-profit organization called Assistive Media. Through the Web site at www.assistivemedia.org, visitors can access recordings of articles from magazines like The New Yorker, Wired, and The Atlantic Monthly. Erdody was inspired to create Assistive Media when his father began losing his eyesight. He could no longer enjoy reading articles from his favorite publications.

Many visually impaired computer users have artificial text readers to vocalize what is on their screen. These text readers can interpret scanned copies of magazines, but Erdody believes the human voice adds intrinsic value that text readers can't match. He sees the Web site as an opportunity for visitors to experience the connection of many different human voices. It's also a chance for sighted people to share their love of reading with others. Assistive Media was intended to help the physically challenged, but Erdody finds many sighted visitors appreciate it as well.

To learn more about Assistive Media, sound on the Web, and other sites for the visually impaired, visit our Web site at www.iota.org. For Internet On The Air, I'm Joan Silvi.

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The Interview

IOTA interviewed David Erdody in October 1999.

How did you first get interested in the idea of Assistive Media?

First I was interested in my father’s condition. He was diabetic, and he was having trouble with his eyesight. I started looking into the material that he liked to read, if it was available on audio, just in case it was a worst-case scenario, and discovered that a large percentage of publications are not published in an audio format specifically for people with visual disabilities. I thought it would be a good project to pursue, and so I started a non-profit company and started reproducing published works that were inaccessible - mostly from the New Yorker magazine, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, and those types of publications; short subject, non-fiction mostly

How do you choose content for you site?

I just select whatever seems good, whatever I’m interested in, whatever other readers are interested in doing. I definitely keep in mind the audience and try to provide a nice rounded variety of material

When did it all begin?

First I had a test project where we would distribute these on cassettes locally, and I got some feedback from listeners from that project and basically it expanded to the Web. The number of people with disabilities that are using computers, that are on the Web, is growing. So I set up a Web site, got permission to put the material on the Web site, and now I only have to make one copy of a reading to make it available to any and all.

How did you originally find your audience?

Through the libraries for the blind and physically handicapped

Why did you decide to move to the Web?

It just kind of made sense to me when I found out the number of people with disabilities that are using the Net. It just made sense to me that the spoken word format that has been used for sixty years to accommodate the disabled would be very easily adaptable to the Net where a person could access whatever’s available anytime they wanted, as many times as they want. There’re a lot of advantages to putting it on the Web as far as being able to listen to it whenever you want.

There’s a number of listservs, newsgroups, there’s a lot of Web sites that deal with disability, and disability and technology. When you search the field, you get an understanding this is certainly a thriving community. The computer is such a great tool for people with disabilities because it just provides them with accessibility that hasn’t been before.

Do you have any difficulty getting copyright permission?

I have been turned down by one author; John Updike of the New Yorker said no. Other than that, every author, every copyright holder that has replied to me has said yes, and they always say thank you for doing this... And some give me blanket permission.

With magazine articles there’s no real royalty involved, I’m not infringing on any type of profit.... They see the value in it... That’s very encouraging.

Some of the authors know people with disabilities, and they talk about that. It’s very nice to hear people’s concerns about their experience with disabilities and their encouragement to me.

How do you run the site?

I started it in March of ‘98... I offer half a dozen or so titles each month or so. I update it about every month. I have an update list of people; you can subscribe to find out when I update the list.

Do you archive the site?

No; I want to, though. I want desperately to.

What’s holding you back?

Funding. This is an after hours gig. Right now I’ve received some really terrific attention. I won RealNetworks non-profit of the year, their Progressive award... That was an honor that I just can’t believe; it was terrific... I’m going to build on this, and hopefully, the long term goal is a virtual library of - anything. Why not, right?

How do you spread the word?

I do news searches on disability issues, and I contact companies and individuals who I think may have an interest in this. There’s no real heavy marketing... It’s basically word of mouth. I let the newsgroups that focus on disabilities know about this... I get people subscribing, usually every day... There’s a button on the Web site to subscribe.

...

Last month [there were] 2000 unique visitors and those 2000 listeners listened to an average of a half hour of audio. I have just under 700 subscribers... I’m happy with those numbers. The fact that the average listener is sitting there for half an hour listening is very encouraging...

Is anyone else doing what you’re doing?

Not as far as literary works. I’m taking a work that was previously published inaccessible and transferring it into an accessible form - the human voice. There’s a lot of disability sites, the American Foundation for the Blind, the Library of Congress’ National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. They have RealAudio on their sites... usually they’re speeches, there’s radio shows... RealAudio is being used on disability for informational purposes but not as far as providing accessibility to previously published literary works.

Are there for-profit sites doing this?

There’s a couple of for-profit sites. Broadcast.com was the first site that I came across a couple years ago that offered audio books from beginning to end on their Web site. Mark Cuban, who is the founder of Broadcast.com, he was one of the judges in the Streamer award that chose me the winner and he wrote me a very nice letter... I was glad to see Broadcast.com...do that.

There are two other sites called Audible and Audio Highway that manufacture a portable device where you can listen to Internet-based audio away from your computer...

Who's your audience?

It’s hard to say... I don’t really know too much personal information about them... There is a section on my site where I have profiles and comments from users and they talk a little bit about themselves and about Assistive Media.

...

I’m just having fun. The way it is now, I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. I think the stories are very interesting. There hasn’t been one story I’ve put up that hasn’t been worthwhile listening to. And I love it, but really, the obvious thing is to expand.

How did you learn user-friendly for visually impaired?

When I prototyped the site... I looked at other disability sites and talked with, e-mailed computer users - especially computer users who are completely blind. I think that’s quite a barrier to overcome, and I want to design it to be the easiest it can be. What I found is... just simple text with very low graphics, text that is large, text that is bright for those with low vision. It accommodates a variety of disabilities. It’s ultimately designed, though, for a blind person. With their artificial text reader they can go to the site and run through it very easily. With their artificial text reader they’ll be able to determine which are the links to the audio programs, to the titles. The key is simplicity, nothing fancy. No Java, No animated gifs.

...

It’ll artificially speak the text on the screen...the text readers are evolving to be very aesthetic... It reads the text for you on the screen, and you’re able to navigate not only the Web site but your entire computer. It’ll artificially speak the icons on your desktop, it’ll read your e-mail.

Are people becoming aware of these issues?

There’s been a lot of really terrific press and a lot of PR by companies to reach out to people with disabilities, to design things accessible. Microsoft, Apple - Apple’s always been a disability advocate. Bill Gates, whether you like him or not, wrote a terrific article in the New York Times about disability. Probably the best article I’ve ever read on the need for disability and how it helps everyone...

How other people involved in the Assistive Media site?

It is mostly me as far as the direction and the material that’s done, and the production and a lot of other things. Where other people are mostly involved is volunteer readers. I’ve had a number of people graciously volunteer for this, probably three or four dozen different people. To get the different voices out there - the human voice is just that, it’s very human - for me to be able to provide a variety of voices, not just mine, but a bunch more, I think makes the service attractive.

What are the criteria for being a reader?

A love of reading. You don’t have to have a good voice, I don’t think I have a good voice. I hate listening to myself. I just really love to read. When I’m recording a spoken-word recording, knowing that somebody out there is going to be listening to this is very satisfying.

And then the volunteers who have come here and read who are so much better than I am - Deborah Fisch, who works at the University of Michigan, is one reader who has donated hundreds of hours of her time, a wonderful reader, she’s on the Web site all the time.

How would someone who's interested in reading get involved?

Oh, they’d ask me! All they have to is ask. It has spread word of mouth - readers who have told other people who have become readers who have told other people who have become readers. And when people find out about the site they ask me about it.

I have people around the country e-mail me asking to be readers. That's another interesting part of volunteering to this. There’s a man in New York who’s a documentary film-maker... I send him the text of a reading, he reads, it processes it into RealAudio, and sends it back to me. He volunteers for this offsite, we do it through cyperspace...

There’s a friend of mine in Mesa, Arizona, Katie Weber, who reads onto a compact mini-disc, sends them to me, and I process them here.

The reader doesn’t have to be local; they can be anywhere and contribute to this. I think that’s very exciting. I think if I were to really get things together and have this thing funded, to attract readers worldwide... that gets into different languages... There’s a whole window of possibilities when it comes to people volunteering for this. Extending a person’s own pleasure of reading to those who can’t access material is the foundation for this.

Any last thoughts?

I don’t know why this isn’t being done by other organizations. It’s a very simple concept that works... Really who’s responsible is the publishing industry. Their buildings are accessible to disabilities but their publications aren’t. And I don’t understand why there isn’t more of an effort to make published material accessible. There is [an effort], but I’m not satisfied with it, so I’m doing what I can to provide what I think is worthwhile... This should be done on a much larger scale

Please direct questions or comments to iota.webmaster@umich.edu.

Last Updated November 15, 1999

Assistive Media

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