WikiFur:Project Spoken WikiFur

Project Spoken WikiFur aims to produce recordings of WikiFur articles being read aloud.See Spoken Articles for articles that have already been recorded, and see Spoken WikiFur Requests for instructions on how to request that a particular article be recorded.

How to create a Spoken Article

 * 1) Choose an article
 * 2) Record
 * 3) Upload
 * 4) Add to article
 * 5) Add to Spoken articles list

Benefits
Some people wonder why creating spoken recordings of articles is worthwhile, so a quick discussion of the unique benefits is in order.
 * Spoken articles make WikiFur content available to those who can understand English but cannot read.
 * Users can listen to WikiFur articles while they perform tasks that preclude reading but not concentration (such as biking, running, doing housework, etc.). It is presently difficult to find high-quality audio content that entertains and educates like spoken featured articles do.
 * Visually-impaired users can use screen readers, of course, but with current technology, they may not be as accurate as a human vocal performance. This is particularly true of articles relating to science, mathematics, linguistics, and other areas where unusual pronunciation or symbols are prevalent.
 * They are a valuable learning tool for non-native English speakers and those that don't speak it at all. Having a large number of examples of how words are pronounced can be important. In addition, being able to hear how words are pronounced and read them at the same time offers two simultaneous learning styles, auditory and visual, for potentially faster learning.
 * Some may find it easier to concentrate on reading an article while listening to it, especially in an environment with distracting sounds (with the use of headphones).
 * In performing the articles aloud, readers end up catching inconsistencies, redundancies, and awkward phrases that might have been missed by other editors. In this way, the written version of WikiFur improves.

Problems
However, the project does have some difficulties and drawbacks that one should be aware of:


 * It's difficult to keep the spoken version of the articles up to date.
 * Recording and editing articles can be time-consuming, and recordings are sometimes abandoned or have their source text dramatically changed before they are finished.
 * Incorrect pronunciation can mislead non-English-speaking users.
 * Increased bandwidth usage
 * Inaccuracies in spoken word version are more difficult to check and may not be possible to edit, it may be necessary to "dump" a recording entirely

Solution Suggestions
Text to voice is an area of computer technology with many current and future possibilities:


 * The future addition of a conversion button on each wiki page to turn text into an ogg would give access to all pages.
 * Many current real-time text-to-voice programmes have free trial versions that can be used with the copy-and-paste function to read any page. Alternatively the free Opera web browser allows real time text-to-voice conversion of web pages, in addition to voice command of the browser itself.
 * Phones that text a word to WikiFur and receive an audio file in return will give instant mobile access to the content in audio form.
 * Use of YouTube to augment text-only articles provides another option for users of WikiFur.
 * Use of multiple software to take book text into audio visual. Using text-to-voice and moviemaker software and also a web provider is demonstrated at the bottom of the page of Treaty of Waitangi under audio visual.