For the sighted, the part you hear is timed to the part you see. Those who are learning disabled or unfamiliar with English can benefit from reading along while they hear it. A side benefit to working on worldwide committees is that Hakkinen gets to participate in making early prototypes. Until now, synthetic speech has been relatively unknown to people outside who are not blind. This year it produced 106 electronic books, versus more than 3,700 audio books.
Reference materials are the most often chosen types to do electronically.
The user can use the powers of the computer to do searches, store materials in a more efficient way. This will offer a wider array of access to our computers than audiotape. It will still be the natural spoken word. It's all for accessibility. We open up the large store of knowledge from the digital libraries and make them available to anyone anytime.