An alternative method is to remove most of the pauses by analysing the audio data and discarding any parts where the waveform is flat. This is very crude and only works for very good recordings made on DAT tape. Although we can't get all the audio for a course on a CD-ROM, we can get up to 10 cassettes worth on each. As the text of the whole course is on each CD, this reduces the amount of time the student has to spend swapping cassettes to look up other parts of the course. Saving extracts There is an option to mark sections of text for extraction to a file or directly to a printer.
Students can then create their own Braille or large print copy of key points.
It can also be used for producing longer Braille or large print extracts. The first time that a student receives a ReadOut CD-ROM they run a short installation program. This creates a text file which stores user preferences and can be edited later if necessary. Each CD has its own menu and as there is plenty of room for documents, we include general OU publications such as information about current courses and student handbooks.