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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

> you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.75-2X normal speech. You'll be the only one who can understand your screen reader

Huh. I already listen to most podcasts and recorded presentations at 2x. Now you make me wonder if I could process information faster with a screen reader even though my sight works just fine...

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I worked with a blind dev and his screen reader is incomprehensible by everyone but him. It had to be at like 5-6x. Guy was a wizard. Sure he had some disadvantages with vision but the guy was wicked fast and would pump out the most code

As someone who also does this, I find that the problem becomes not processing the information, but retaining it, and I haven't found a solution to that yet.

I used to listen/watch everything at 1.5x-2x speed but found a similar result. Now I only increase the speed if it's information I only need to process once (e.g the news) but not remember later (lectures, tutorials etc).

I've been doing that lately (1.5x-2x), but taking notes, and making sure to work on any exercises provided after the lecture. I need notes for retention even at 1x, so it doesn't feel like extra work.

The problem with retaining is independent of processing information speed.

I doubt regular folks can reach 5x or even 2x with good retention. Perhaps if it's a podcast of people chatting about random things, it's possible, but any intellectually stimulating content you probably will have problems. Visually impaired people probably have an advantage on account of having their entire visual cortex freed up and possibly able to help with this (not sure if it does, neuroscience majors here?)

(As a sighted person) I watch all my videos or podcasts at 2x. Depending on how new or dense the content is, I might have to occasionally dial it back, but I think I do fairly well at 2x (usually, this is only the case if I'm distracted or the slides are going by too quickly as well). Often I can even up it to 3x.

Maybe retention is worse, but I'm still better off. Higher speeds are more engaging and enjoyable to me, as bad speakers and long pauses matter less. Therefore I benefit from watching more talks and lectures. For better retention it is preferable to occasionally re-watch good talks for spaced repetition.

The Video Speed Controller extension is indispensable part of my browsing experience, mostly for keyboard shortcuts to speed up/down and << >> videos.

I've heard screen readers going way faster (I don't know quantitatively) than what it sounds like when I listen to videos at 2x.

I also think it's important that the screen readers use a "old school" synthesized voice, instead of a voice that sound natural, because each of the phonemes is articulated distinctly.

I do that, too.

Especially presentations. For most movies, I am only comfortable with 1.25x. In presentations people talk extra slowly. It is a classic advice when learning to give presentations, talk slower. After getting used to 2X speed, it becomes extremely frustrating to listen to a live presentation.

Although even 2x presentations still feels slower than my reading speed as kid. But I cannot speed read anymore since I need glasses

I've had the same experience with audio books. I find it's easy with entertainment. In normal speech there is a lot of redundancy. You can miss entire sentences and still follow. I don't this would be the case with a screen reader.

You got me curious.

I just put some news interview on YouTube at 2x.

It is fun how even the accents are easily recognizable.

Anyway, this is in Spanish. My guess by reading the comments is Spanish is a much easier language to listen at a faster speed.

If you want to try it, older tts voices such as eloquence are intelligible at much higher speeds than the modern natural sounding voices.

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