New technology to open up a world of books for people who are blind or vision impaired
Sonnar is on a mission to remove barriers to the written word.
It is estimated there are more than 575,000 people who are blind or vision impaired currently living in Australia who are experiencing challenges to accessing books, magazines and newspapers. Hoping to make reading accessible to everyone, Jarek Beksa founded Sonnar, a platform harnessing the power of audio and voice technologies to open up the world for people with accessibility needs.
As one of six initiatives selected for the inaugural Humanitech Lab Innovation Program, Sonnar is currently being supported through mentorship and funding to scale up this innovative technology. We spoke with Jared about his start-up journey and how he’s centering community in Sonnar’s development.
Note: Are you experiencing a print disability? Sonnar is conducting a survey and would love to here from you. The form is accessible with screen readers on both Windows and Mac, more information can be found here.
Can you explain what Sonnar is?
Sure! We are helping people with reading disabilities, which can include blindness, paralysis, dyslexia or any physical or other conditions that prevents you from reading printed text. This includes books, magazines and newspapers. Our mission is to end the book famine by taking advantage of two worldwide developments: smart speakers and the Marrakesh Treaty.
“Currently, if you have a reading disability your access to printed is severely limited; according to WHO, only about 10% of all printed content is accessible.” Jarek Beksa, Founder and CEO, Sonnar
We are creating an online library that will allow you to access these materials through the newest technologies, such as voice assistants like Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, as well as through a mobile application and web access. Also, we are building a global collection of audiobooks, magazines and newspapers that are scattered around the world at local disability organizations or libraries. That will mean anyone with the aforementioned disabilities will be able to access a global collection instead of just whatever local collection is available in their specific country. Also, local libraries will not have to reproduce the same book multiple times — this will save time and effort.
For this, we’re utilising a treaty that was signed by Australia in 2014 called the Marrakesh Treaty, which allows for the reproduction and transfer of copyrighted materials for the purposes of people with disabilities. This means, that an authorised organisation can take printed version of Harry Potter, convert it into an accessible format and then distribute it to people who have reading disability with no need to ask for copyright, because it’s exempt.
Where does it currently sit? If someone with a reading disability really wanted to access global resources now, how tricky would it be?
Currently, if you have a reading disability your access to printed is severely limited; according to WHO, only about 10% of all printed content is accessible.
In developed countries like Australia, users can seek help at local blind organizations, which are doing amazing job. However, the size of these local catalogues varies from country to country; people can only access books and periodicals reproduced and held by their national disability organisation. Usually, it is around 30 to 50 thousand titles. Our aim is to have at least half a million books in the first couple of years that can be accessed by anyone across the world, instead of just that local catalogue. Using the newest technologies can allow access to millions of books in any language, anywhere in the world.
Most popular ways to access books still are CD Audio service (physical delivery), braille print, mobile or web application access or dedicated and expensive accessible content players.
“The big dream would be to end the book famine by becoming a global library of books, magazines, and other reading content accessible in every language, for people with any reading disability, no matter where they live.”
Sonnar created world-first accessible content delivery platform available on Smart Speakers. Most blind organisations are looking into voice assistance technologies and how to make access to books much easier. The reason for that is quite simple: people who are blind or who struggle to manipulate smartphones or computers are quite comfortable using voice assistants, because your voice is the most natural user interface. Our usability study has proven that people with reading disabilities find it much more easy to learn and use. Over 90% of users preferred using voice assistants instead of smartphones or computers.
Have you heard a lot of frustration coming out around the lack of accessibility?
Oh, there is, and we did a lot of interviews with people who are blind and over 60 years of age. Many of them are not happy with their smartphones and computers; they often struggle to learn how to use smartphones in general. And they often are reluctant to ask their family members for help. Our platform is aimed to increase:
· Self-reliance
· Independence
· Access to information
Imagine that you’ve lost your sight due to age and you want to use a smartphone — it’s nearly impossible for many people. Voice assistants, such as Alexa or Google Home, make it so much easier.
We’ve seen it many times — where people who never used the internet liked the idea of accessing information through smart speakers. Initially, many of them were suspicious, but after a while they loved it. They often ended up saying how easy it was to use and access information. For some people, a smart speaker was the very first device that allowed them to use the internet for the first time in their lives.
Those devices also serve another purpose: a lot of people who are blind or elderly face isolation and smart speakers can play the role of someone they can talk to. And having someone to talk to is really important to this group.
What is the big dream for Sonnar?
The big dream would be to end the book famine by becoming a global library of books, magazines, and other reading content accessible in every language, for people with any reading disability, no matter where they live.
How does it work in terms of accessing Sonar? If someone is speaking to Alexa, are they on the Sonnar page? Or is it a plugin that works with a browser?
We want our platform to be accessible through all available channels: including mobile phones, web, smart speakers, voice assistants and more.
On Smart Speakers you just need to say “Open Sonnar Library” to get instant access to over 12000 of books.
How does the funding model work?
For people in a low-income setting, the service will be free of charge. For those who can support our platform, it will be similar to the Spotify model where, for a small monthly fee, the users get access to all content (on Spotify it is music and podcast, in our case it is books, magazines and newspapers). We are also helping other blind organizations to make their content available to their members.
“Using newest technologies can allow access to millions of books in any language, anywhere in the world.”
We are already working with a couple of organisations around the world: we’re running a pilot with Vision Australia, we already implemented our service with Blind Low Vision NZ and we also installed it at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the UK. We work directly with organisations but we also want to work with individuals — especially in countries that don’t have a disability organisation.
What are some of the biggest challenges in getting to that point?
There are many challenges. We overcame a couple of them, especially technical ones and design ones. But right now, the biggest challenge is to increase our book collection and then let users know that our service exists. We want to expand our channel range tool, too; we currently focus mostly on smart speakers, but we want to expand to all the channels. We would also like to have what we call a “device agnostic interface”, which would mean that no matter what device you’re using, you will be able to access our platform. For example, I was talking to a blind user who said: “If I’m on the plane, I would love to listen to a book on a smartphone, then when I go home, I would like to say ‘Hey, Alexa, continue reading that book!’” So, we want the system to know where the person left off reading and just pick up from the last moment.
What do you want to get from the Humanitech Lab Innovation experience?
We are hoping Humanitech will help us scale the idea in Australia and later globally. So far, we have managed to prove that there is a need for this service, and we know that our product works. We want to expand it to all the channels and get the service out there. We also hope that Humanitech will help us to learn how to operate as a not-for-profit organisation.
I have a two-pronged question: where did the idea come from, and how long have you been operating Sonnar?
The idea started in 2006. I worked for the Polish Telecom R&D (research and design) Center in Poland as a fresh graduate from uni. My first project was related to voice user interfaces, where I was programming Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems.
My first voice application was a telephone game — an interactive choose your own adventure audio game. Instead of typing your commands you would use your voice, instead of reading or looking at the images you would listen to the story through your phone.
At some point, I was testing that game with one of the users who was blind. During some warmup questions, I asked him how does he like to spend free time? Does he play games? He responded with an angry voice: “No, because nobody makes games for us.”
“Everybody should have access to printed material.” Jarek Beksa, Founder and CEO, Sonnar
I loved playing games myself when I was a teenager and I know how fun and important they can be in peoples lives. Since that encounter, I decided to conduct research on audio gaming and audio user interfaces. For that reason, I came to New Zealand to do my PhD, which was around designing games for people who are blind. During that process, me and my team created around 15 audio games, which were quite popular. We actually found out that people loved playing them, so they did quite well.
At the same time, we were testing these games at local blind organization in New Zealand and we found out that their users have another problem. They said, “Playing games is one issue, but reading books, magazines and newspapers is another one”. This is actually more serious, because not everybody likes playing games. Everybody should have access to printed material.
The most common way to distribute books at that time was to burn CDs and send them to each user on a weekly basis as a means of distribution. Imagine the process — you would call the contact centre and request “Harry Potter in my next CD.” You would then have to wait up to seven days before you got it, because someone had to burn it, then someone had to pack it up and deliver it to you. Once it arrived, you would be able to play it on your dedicated — expensive ($1,500) — device.
The most annoying thing is that when you’re done and you want to order another book, you need to send the old CD back to the foundation and it had to be destroyed due to copyright reasons, then they have to burn you another CD. So, imagine how long it takes and how frustrating that is! Try to imagine yourself pressing play on your Netflix movie, but then you have to wait seven days for it to start playing.
In 2018, we created an accessible audio distribution platform for Blind Low Vision NZ members that allows access to over 36,000 books and magazines to over 5,000 users.
How does it work? Is it AI-assisted reading — so a machine will read, like a text-to-voice system, rather than an individual?
It’s actually both. A lot of books coming from blind organisations such as Vision Australia are audio books with human-narrated voice, but we also play content using a synthetic voice. Most users prefer human narrated books but synthetic voices are getting better and better every year. They can emulate emotions or accent. You can also switch between female and male voices.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome for Sonnar that you’ve learned from and that have carried you further along this journey?
The biggest one is getting the service out there to people with reading disabilities and inviting other organisations to work with us and contribute to creating a global repository of books. Another challenge is working with multiple entities in multiple countries — where there are different implementations of Marrakesh Treaty — or where it is not implemented at all. There are many copyright and logistic considerations: for example, verification of users disability status, registrations, different books formats, languages, etc.
It’s a unique communication challenge, because as you’re saying, a lot of the user group don’t have access to the internet or traditional ways of communicating. How do you get to the ears that need to hear this ?
It is a challenge that requires all hands-on deck. That’s why the partnership with disability organisations, telcos, and the users’ personal support network becomes really important to us.
“One interesting note: one of the oldest users in Blind Low Vision NZ was 96. She had never used the Internet before and she basically said, “Yeah, I love it! And if I can learn it, anyone can.” Can you imagine? She’s 96 years old — it’s actually wonderful.”
In New Zealand, mobile operators would offer free internet access to people who are blind and over 80 years of age. That is wonderful, because the mobile operator would provide a portable modem with free internet data, then the blind organization would install the modem and a smart speaker device, and we would provide the distribution platform.
In the UK at the moment, RNIB (national blindness charity) is sending out more than 4,000 Alexa devices to users. As you can imagine, it’s a challenge to install it — to open an account and then teach the person to start using it if they haven’t before.
How do you make our software ready to use out of the box? We created an accessible tutorial that explains, step-by-step how to use the library. We got a lot of feedback that it works really well, but before that, sometimes the person needs to learn how to set up an email account to actually register for the service, or how to connect the WiFi. We have users who don’t know what the Internet or Wifi is.
Lastly, our users’ families and caregivers are just as important. We often get people reaching out to ask how they can help their elderly relatives join Sonnar Library because sight loss means that they have been losing the ability to do things they love, such as reading. This shows us that reaching family members is hugely important due to the supportive roles that they tend to play in our users’ lives.
One interesting note: one of the oldest users in Blind Low Vision NZ was 96. She had never used the Internet before and she basically said, “Yeah, I love it! And if I can learn it, anyone can.” Can you imagine? She’s 96 years old — it’s actually wonderful.
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This article is part of a series detailing the innovations taking place to support technology start-ups that focus on social impact, supported by Humanitech’s Lab initiative. Learn more about other organisations pioneering the use of frontier technology for social good here.
