When we explain what ReadSpeaker can bring to online content owners, one of the main elements is ease of implementation and of use. Implementing our service on a web site or blog is analog to for example installing Google Analytics. You simply need to copy/paste HTML code to get your web site talking. On the user side, you just need to be connected to the Internet and off you go listening to a speech-enabled web site or blog.

I’m insisting on this facility of usage both from the content owner and user point of views because it brings me to the title of this post. When you refer to printing a web page, the first impression is that of how easy it is to perform such an action. The same could be said of other well distributed goodies such as sharing an article or sending a page. The real innovation we brought to the Internet back in 1999 was the ability to also “print” sound as easily as printing an online text. I must confess that I didn’t coin this impression of printing sound. That was the finding of a well-known tech blogger in France called Fred Cavazza who first discussed this concept in this post (in French).

Printing sound conveys a very appealing image to the ability to simply click on our listen buttons to start listening to the content of a web page. It also, as is the case with printing a page, shows that with ReadSpeaker you can also “carry” along the sound impression. This is the case because you can save the mp3 file of the page you are listening to for use at a later time or on a mobile device. I really like this comparison of ReadSpeaker to printing sound. I find these kind of images often speak for a thousand words.

So are you ready to print sound?

speechtechmag.com published an article from an interview with Roy Lindemann (VoiceCorp CIO) about the launch of the webReader today: Read the whole article here: http://www.speechtechmag.com/Articles/News/News-Feature/Web-Talk-on-the-Fly-52406.aspx

In a recent agreement, Target and the National Federation of the Blind settled for a class action lawsuit which had been filed by several blind users of the Target web site back in 2006.  One of the main points of the agreement is Target’s obligation to make their web site fully accessible by end of February 2009. So how should one read this agreement; glass half empty or half full? The pessismists will argue that the stick is not the best method to implement long-term changes within the private sector and that only a consistent, pedagogical process will bring companies to see the benefits of making their web sites accessible. The argument here is that this will only bring about short term and highly publicized marketing stunts and even possible ways to get around these class actions by bringing teams of lawyers to creatively combat them! I don’t think so.

For the first time, this type of news will send an alarm bell to the ears of the decision makers and provide a concrete point of reference for accessibility experts to make their case without having to dig into theoretical guidelines and reports. I think that lessons will be learned and that this could be a turning point for many other major company web sites to think twice before launching or updating web sites and taking into account all the added benefits of giving equal access to their online content.

It is of course important to use best practice methods when trying to implement accessibility advice but once in a while an an agreement like the one Target and the NFB have made is a very good awakener.

Here at VoiceCorp we’re convinced and obsessed that all web site owners and bloggers benefit from adding an audio version to their online content. So far, we have had a lot of our customers coming from the public arena. That is quite normal since this sector has often the obligation to provide an equal access to their information whether you suffer from a disability or use a mobile device to reach their online content for example. Making their web sites talk helps them achieve this.

But what about the private corporate sector? We are starting to see an evolution here with an increasing amount of household names contacting us and asking us what speech-enabling their web sites could help them achieve. One of the interesting trends here is that some of these companies see an audio version of their web content as part of their overall corporate social responsibility (CSR). Since more and more of their corporate information is published online, these companies are considering the impact that this could have on all those customers, partners, employees that for some reason would prefer to listen to this information rather than reading it. The most recent example of this type of behaviour comes from a world-wide leading luxury and retail group which we are unfortunately not allowed to name. We asked them the straight forward question why they wanted to provide a speaking version of their web site? The answer was not only did they want to make their content as accessible as possible to a maximum amount of visitors to their web site but that this was also part of a bigger general reflection on how they were trying to increase their CSR in all the different aspects of their day-to-day operations. Of course, the more visible parts of a CSR strategy are for example to foster employee volunteering programs or taking part in environmental actions but it is noteworthy to see that the web is now also part of this overall reasoning. At the end of the day, CSR whether it is done offline or online is all about reaching beyond purely business objectives and making the world a better place to live in no?