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Talking eBooks transform standard printed books into virtual electronic books that are displayed on a computer. Talking eBooks offer a variety of illustrative and audio features such as narration, individually clickable words, and read-along color-coding of words.

Talking eBooks convert books into exciting and interactive multimedia products that can be distributed online or on a CD-ROM. These ebooks support voice, videos, and interactive quizzes to make them more appealing to children. It is acknowledged that reading aloud is an extremely effective way to improve reading fluency. Using Talking eBooks will help to strengthen language skills and improve comprehension through longer retention of highlighted words and phrases. They provide an effective learning experience for children through different interactive activities and assessments. They offer an ideal solution for end-to-end workflow from regular print PDF files to online books. The display extends the real book look and feel with page flip feature. The Talking eBooks work across all present-day browsers and operating systems.

Features:

• Read along: The read along feature reads out word on the page, highlighting each word as the audio progresses.
• Word glossary: The user can select links on the page that enable additional pop-ups for word meanings or glossaries. The text inside the pop-ups are also read and highlighted. On closing the pop-up, the audio of the main page continues from the last read word.
• User customization: The read-along text highlight and the audio can be turned on/off by user. One can choose to turn off/on either one of them or both. The color of the highlight can also be configured.
• Play-pause: There is a play and pause option using which the user can pause wherever they wish to and continue from there by playing again.
• Page flip feature: This is the basic page-flip feature that will turn the page by clicking on the corner of the page.
• Close-up view: To zoom a page, the user can just point the cursor to a particular area and click. On zooming in, the user can hold the mouse button to drag the page or use the vertical/horizontal scroll bar to move around on the page. The user can also zoom-in or zoom-out by choosing the buttons on the top navigation bar.
• Thumbnail view: This is located on the TOC tab and presents all the pages to the user as thumbnails. The user can either see the contents as thumbnails or as a TOC listing. The user can select a specific thumbnail and navigate to that page.
• Table of contents: This tab has the listing of the contents in the book. The listing is exactly the same as that in the TOC of the actual book. This tab aids in navigating to a specific page by choosing the same taxonomical categorization as in the print book.
• Jump to page: This functionality allows the user to jump to a specific page by entering the page number. The user can jump to any page number from any part of the book.
• Internal-external hyperlinks: All links present in the book will be retained and carried forward to the online version.
• E-mail a page: This feature enables viral marketing by allowing users to e-mail the URL of the book to their friends.

Solution:

A template will be developed based on specifications provided by the client. The input file is imported into this template. A script is then developed with all the rules and specifications specified for the ebook format. The script is developed using applications that allow it to be used with any type of input (PDFs, Word). The solution is delivered in an interactive digital format with minimal content conversion involved. Talking eBooks can be either delivered on CD-ROMs bundled with the print book or sold separately online. The template is designed using reusable components where multiple titles can be deployed with huge cost savings.

Benefits:

1. Offers clients the flexibility to choose between print, audio CDs, and Talking eBooks.
2. Will help to improve print sales by bundling audio CDs with books.
3. Offers a more effective learning tool for children and people with visual, learning, and physical disabilities.