Opinion: Text to speech: inclusivity
in academics

On Oct. 18, I went to see my philosophy professor to clear up my last-minute questions for the midterm the next day.

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After he answered my questions, he instantly earned cool-professor points when he pulled up his desktop and showed me that he had changed his computer assistant’s voice to that of Taylor Swift. This wasn’t a random piece of information – we had previously shared our appreciation for the singer with each other.

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After this encounter, I got to thinking: I would probably be doing much better with understanding “The Complete Works of Plato” and “A New Aristotle Reader” if there were official audiobooks that Rider provided for all students.

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As someone with a minor processing disability, I use the app SpeechBot to create audio versions of all my readings for school that do not already have an audiobook; however, the app is not perfect, and there have been quite a few times where the app has gotten the order of lines wrong, forcing me to go back and reread the lines that AI confused.

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Although I know that I am an adult and part of my responsibilities is finding a way to read and understand all my school work, I don’t think it should be on me to find tools like expensive audio textbooks in order to succeed, especially because the tools I do find are not up to par.

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It seems like Rider is starting to agree with me.

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In late October, the Franklin E. Moore Library announced that they are bringing the Palace Project app to the university.

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The Palace Project, which is funded by the New Jersey State Library, "provides access to over 19,000 'Reading for Fun' e-books/audiobooks,” stated Electronic Resources & User Access Librarian Sharon Whitfield in a university-wide email on Oct. 18. 

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I’ll hand it to Rider: this is a good start; however, I hope that they know there is still a large load of work that needs to be done if they want to be inclusive of students with processing disabilities or anyone who has a little trouble understanding what they read.

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Nineteen thousand books are not nearly enough; we need every book that Rider’s courses require.

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One other major issue with the library’s plan is that currently, there is no list available on the university’s website of the books that are a part of the app.

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Unfortunately, we live in a world where being completely inclusive of disabled people is a process. While it is good that Rider is attempting to continue the process, I encourage them to realize that what they are doing is the bare minimum, and I hope that they are smart enough to keep moving forward.