Audiobooks were originally meant for the hearing community without any regards to the Deaf. Even Hard of Hearing consumers with mild to moderate hearing loss were able to listen to audiobooks comfortably with the use of their hearing aids. Plans for Deaf inclusion is soon surfacing. This article shares just how audiobooks will now keep in mind its deaf readers.
Audible is planning to release captions for all audiobooks. Audible Captions will utilize machine language to transcribe the audio from each book, which will allow the user to read along with the narrator.
This is significant for the Deaf Community because:
- As a deaf person, they’ll be able to access any audiobook of choice and enjoy it like their hearing cohorts.
- This will enhance the reading rate and vocabulary for deaf readers since, so often, many deaf people grew up with learning gaps in mainstream classrooms and limited vocabulary expansion.
This new Audible created by Amazon will allow Deaf users to search word definitions for new terms learned, making this a game-changer in the world of entertainment. This is a game-changer in the world of entertainment for the Deaf.
The rollout of this program, which was expected to be on the 10th of September, but has since been delayed due to an ongoing lawsuit. The Association of the American Publishers has been in court in the past few weeks following claims that Audible’s Audiobook Captions program is a copyright infringement of the original publishers’ work. Therefore, the future of this particular program is dependent on the court’s ruling.
What do you think about the audiobook captions? Will it offer the Deaf enough accessibility to the audiobook content? Do you agree that this is indeed a copyright infringement? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below or via our social media pages.
