Uncategorized

Occupation
I am a Sociology Professor and department chair at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I started my career as a professor 18 years ago. Over thirty years ago I started listening to – literally – books on tape. I evolved to listening to books on my phone. I’ve added podcasts and more recently textbooks delivered through apps. Until I discovered Voice Dream Reader, I was frustrated that I could not listen to journal articles, news paper articles, drafts of my own papers, and academic books.

How long have you been using Voice Dream Reader?
One of my graduate students who is immensely creative and marvelously tenacious introduced me to Voice Dream Reader in May. Therefore only three months – yet I have used it every day, multiple times a day. I could not believe that he was serious – I could listen to dissertations, academic articles, news paper articles, web pages, blogs, and more? The piles of Chronicle of Hire Education articles I want to keep up with but do not manage to find time for? I immediately downloaded the app and LISTENED to the instructions. I was thrilled.

[…]

By Dr. Matthew Schneps

A number of people have asked me some questions in response to Winston’s blog.

Q: Do you start off reading a 650 words per minute or do you have to build up to it?
A: No. You have to build up to it. […]

Dr. Matthew Schneps is one of the most respected scientists in the research of dyslexia. He heads up Laboratory for Visual Learning, a joint program of Harvard University and University of Massachusetts Boston.

I first met Dr. Schneps at a conference about a year ago. His keynote speech talked about the importance of character spacing and line spacing in reading for people with dyslexia. Since then, I’ve met Dr. Schneps regularly and incorporated some of his research findings in Voice Dream Reader.

Dr. Schneps has dyslexia. He advocates for eReaders and likes Voice Dream Reader, but he didn’t use it himself. When I asked him about it, he said he preferred to read visually so he could quickly alter reading speed. He thought the fixed pace of text-to-speech would prevent him from pausing effortlessly to digest or reflect during reading.

This summer, while I was on vacation, I got an email from Dr. Schneps: […]

Voice Dream Reader was always about text-to-speech, so whenever I was asked to add audiobook support, my thought was, why would I do that? Audiobooks and text-to-speech are competing technologies. I need to stick with my specialty, particularly since Voice Dream Reader is widely considered the best text-to-speech app in the market.

Two months ago, an organization, Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled, approached me and offered to underwrite the development of audiobook support. Specifically, support for DAISY 2.02 audiobooks. While I appreciated that someone would pay me to add a feature to my app, my first instinct was to politely decline. […]

Occupation
I worked at the State of Michigan Department of Education for 30 years. Currently I work as an assistive technology advocate and education consultant. I love learning about new assistive technologies, and recently published the book Dyslexia and the iPad – Overcoming Dyslexia with Technology.

How long have you been using Voice Dream Reader?
I have been using Voice Dream Reader since it came out in 2012. I have dyslexia. I have almost everything read to me on my iPad. Voice Dream Reader is one of my favorite apps.
[…]