The two most important goals for the three year project was to develop a system that
could:
- Store more than 20 hours of continues speech on a single CD-ROM disc.
- Give the reader random access to the talking book from the table of contents.
In July 1993 TPB commissioned Labyrinten Data AB, a Swedish computer company, to
develop software that could demonstrate the principles for recording and playback of
digital talking books. The talking book software was built on the DAISY concept (Digital
Audio-based Information System). The core of the concept is the phrase based storing of
the audio. Additional requirements on the system was:
- Ability to skim the text, phrase by phrase or section by section, where section is a
collection of phrases.
- Ability to search for different parts in the text-based table of contents.
- Ability to search for specific pages in the talking book.
- Ability to place and search for bookmarks in the book.
and in a future version:
- Ability to underline and make notes in the talking book.