The CNIB produces indices with synthetic speech. These are then "joined" to the body of the book which has been produced with human narration. An index that is produced with marked up text provides the user with a DAISY book that provides word search options which otherwise would not be possible. Production time required to create the indices with TTS is about one tenth of the time required to narrate them with human voice.
In summary, the process is as follows. EasePublisher is used to create a full text DAISY DTB of the scanned index. Following this, and during "pre-production" an in-house developed XSLT is used to insert the Loquendo codes, add punctuation to improve the prosody, and allow utilization of the custom dictionary which is under on-going development. Following the production of the synthetic speech with Loquendo, a post production process (again, in-house developed tools are used) removes the Loquendo codes. The DTB is encoded, regenerated and validated.
Once the DTB of the index is complete, it is manually "joined" with the completed, human narrated, book body. The completed DAISY DTB is then regenerated and validated. This process is somewhat labour intensive, and it is hoped that one or more of the DMFC transformers will streamline it.